LG ICC ODI Championship to determine seedings for ICC Cricket World Cup 2007

The International Cricket Council today announced that the official LG ICC ODI Championship table on 1 April 2005 will form the basis of the seedings for the ninth ICC Cricket World Cup to be played at eight venues in the Caribbean.

The ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007 will involve a record 16 teams that will be split initially into four groups of four. The top two teams from each of these groups will progress to the Super Eights stage from which four teams will qualify for the semi-finals.

Australia, England, India and West Indies were pre-seeded into separate groups in July 2004 to ensure that transport, accommodation and other logistical issues in West Indies could be effectively managed.

Subject to this pre-seeding, the 11 teams with current One-Day International status will be seeded in the four ICC Cricket World Cup groups according to their official position in the LG ICC ODI Championship on 1 April 2005. The seedings of the remaining five teams will be determined by their qualifying performances in the ICC Trophy 2005 in Ireland from 1-13 July.

ICC Chief Executive Malcolm Speed explained that, given the specific local challenges in holding One-Day International cricket's premier event in the Caribbean, this process was the fairest way of grouping the teams.

"The LG ICC ODI Championship has proved to be a robust mechanism for rating teams since it was introduced in October 2002 so it is the obvious base from which to determine the seedings for the ICC Cricket World Cup," said Mr Speed.

"There are clearly logistical constraints associated with hosting such a major event in the region but with two qualifying places in each group I believe the format gives a fair chance to all participating teams."

If the draw were made using the rankings as they stand today, the groups would be as follows:

These are not the final seedings as there are two series to be concluded before the 1 April cut-off date that could impact on the current LG ICC ODI Championship standings.

New Zealand is currently hosting Australia and South Africa has three home matches against Zimbabwe.

It is possible to predict the potential 1 April ratings of these teams on the official ICC website.

Tournament dates and a full fixtures schedule for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 will be announced shortly after the completion of the ICC Trophy in July.

Australia will be based in St Kitts and Nevis, India's group will be hosted by Trinidad and Tobago, England will play its group games in St Lucia while West Indies will begin its campaign in Jamaica.