The International Cricket Council's (ICC) One-Day International rankings on April 1 this year will determine seedings for the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

Australia, England, India and hosts ? the West Indies ? have been pre-seeded into separate groups to ensure that transport, accommodation and other logistical issues in West Indies can be effectively managed.

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

ICC Chief Executive Malcolm Speed explained yesterday that, given the specific local challenges in staging the premier ODI event in the Caribbean, this process was the fairest way of grouping teams.

"The 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 Speed.

The Cricket World Cup will involve a record 16 teams initially split 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.

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

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

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

Australia (1), South Africa (5), ICC Trophy (1), ICC Trophy (5) New Zealand (2), India (8), Bangladesh (11), ICC Trophy (4) Sri Lanka (3), England (7), Kenya (10), ICC Trophy (3) Pakistan (4), West Indies (6), Zimbabwe (9), ICC Trophy (2)