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| March 23, 2006 | Thursday | Safar 22, 1427 |
Double joy for England
LONDON, March 22: England were given an extra reason to celebrate on Wednesday when the International Cricket Council (ICC) confirmed that they had qualified for the second stage of October’s Champions Trophy one-day tournament in India. Only sides in the top six of the ICC’s One-day Championship table on April 1 automatically reach that stage and England will now be at least sixth on that date thanks to Sri Lanka’s four-wicket loss to Pakistan in Colombo.
They faced the prospect of an additional three one-day matches in India being crammed into an already congested fixture calendar had they finished outside the top six, with teams ranked seventh to tenth taking part in a round-robin series of matches before the Champions Trophy proper starts.
The world governing body’s announcement came on the same day as England defeated India by 212 runs in the third Test in Mumbai, a result that saw their three-match series end in a 1-1 draw.
That victory saw England retain second spot in the ICC’s Test rankings.
Sri Lanka’s defeat in Colombo dropped them to 105 rating points and it means that even if England lose their two ODI matches against India before the cut-off date they cannot drop out of the top six.
If that scenario happened, England would slip to 105 rating points but would still retain sixth place when the ratings were recalculated to three decimal places.
World Champions Australia lead the ODI table by 13 points.
ODI Championship table
(Tabulated under position, team, rating):
1 Australia 132
2 South Africa 119
3 Pakistan 114
4 New Zealand 113
5 India 113
6 England 108
7 Sri Lanka 105
8 West Indies 89
9 Zimbabwe 42
10 Bangladesh 21
11 Kenya 18
—AFP
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