Chennai, Aug 11 (Reporter) A total of 12 teams are in the India's oldest cricket event, the All India Buchi Babu memorial cricket tournament to be held in four venues in Tamil Nadu from August 15 to September 11. In a bid to popularise the sport in the State, the tournament will be held at Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Salem and Natham, where the TNPL tourney received good response from the crowd. . The 12 teams--ten states and two local outfits,TNCA President’s XI and TNCA XI--have been divided into four groups with three teams each. The top teams from each group will qualify for the semi-finals. The First Semi Finals will be played at Tirunelveli, Second Semi Finals and Finals will be played at Natham. The tournament will be conducted on the Ranji Format (4 days) which would be a perfect preparation for the teams during the upcoming season. The prize money for the winners and runners-up will be Rs three lakhs and two lakhs respectively, Tamil Nadu Cricket Association Honorary Secretary R I Palani said in a release here on Sunday. TAKE Sports will be the title sponsor for the Buchi Babu tournament. The tournament was regarded as a curtain-raiser for the domestic season and provides an opportunity for the cricketers to fine tune their skills. . The Buchi Babu Memorial Tournament is the oldest tournament in the country which is still being conducted and used to attract thousands of cricket afficiandos to the ground to watch some of the top Indian stars in action. It began in 1909–10, a year after Buchi Babu's death, and it was conceived as a tournament between local sides. Its profile got a big lift in the late 1960s when it was converted to an invitational tournament, with prominent Indian stars participating. Several leading Indian cricketers like Sunil Gavaskar, GR Viswanath, Krish Srikkanth, Ghulam Parkar, S.Venkataraghavan, Karsan Ghavri, Robin Uthappa in their playing days made it a point to take part in this tournament as part of their preparations for the season ahead. The popular teams that used to regularly feature in the past included Sungrace Mafatlal, Garware Nylons, Nirlons, SBI among others. After the 1971 tour to the West Indies, Sunil Gavaskar came to play Buchi Babu that year for ACC against Jolly Rovers at Loyola College. "There were 10,000 people to see who Sunil Gavaskar was. I was a seventh-standard boy and watched him play for the first time,” Srikkanth, the former dashing Indian opener, once recalled. Following are the teams : Group A : Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Hyderabad. (All league matches in Tirunelveli) Group B : Railways, Gujarat, TNCA President's XI. (All league matches in Salem) Group C : Mumbai, Haryana, TNCA XI. (All league matches in Coimbatore) Group D : Jammu and Kahsmir, Chhattisgarh and Baroda. (All league matches in Natham) ...////...