ICC announce date for World Cup rankings

England will be grouped with Kenya and either Sri Lanka or New Zealand in Pool 3 in the first round of the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean. The final groupings will be determined by the rankings of the teams on April 1, and there are two series to be concluded before then: Australia play New Zealand and South Africa face Zimbabwe.

Sri Lanka will be in England's pool unless Australia whitewash New Zealand in the current five-match series which they lead 2-0. But Australia, the reigning World Champions, will be grouped with South Africa regardless of the result of South Africa's series with Zimbabwe which starts this week. South Africa, currently ranked fifth, cannot move higher even if they whitewash Zimbabwe 3-0.

And, although South Africa would fall down the table if beaten, a pre-seedings policy means that the World Cup groups would remain unaffected. Australia, England, India and the hosts West Indies have been pre-seeded into different pools for the World Cup because of logistics: they will attract the largest support at the venues.

More teams than ever will take part in the World Cup: 16 teams will be split into four pools of four, with the top two teams progressing to the Super Eights ahead of the semi-finals. The competing teams comprise the 11 who currently have one-day international status, while the top five teams in the ICC Trophy, to be held in Ireland in July, will form the remainder.

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