ICC Champions Trophy: India, Aus, Pak in one group

India has been pooled with Ricky Ponting's defending champions, arch rivals Pakistan as well as the dangerous West Indies in Group A.

The other pool features South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and England.

The groupings were finalised on the basis of teams' rankings in the ICC ODI Championship table as on March 12, which was the cut-off date for the determination of the seedings for the Champions Trophy.

Australia were sitting atop the charts on the cut-off date, just ahead of the Proteas, who can take over the number one ranking if they beat Bangladesh in the third one-dayer of their series in Mirpur on Friday.

India, who were joint winners of the Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka in 2002, are placed fourth, one better than Pakistan while West Indies are the lowest ranked of the eight participating teams, even though they won the 2004 Champions Trophy and lost in the final of the last edition.

New Zealand are ranked third and Sri Lanka sixth, one ahead of England.

The event will be played in a round-robin format with the top two sides from each group progressing to the semi-finals with the winners of these matches contesting the final.

India finished an acrimonious tour of Australia by beating the hosts 2-0 in the best-of-three tri-series finals, the first time it had achieved the feat.

The ICC Development International Board had decided that the 2008 tournament would feature the eight top teams as per the ICC ODI Championship table exactly six months prior to the scheduled start of the tournament.

The following are the two groups (with seedings in brackets):

Group A: Australia (1), India (4), Pakistan (5), West Indies (8)

Group B: South Africa (2), New Zealand (3), Sri Lanka (6), England (7)

Former winners:

1998: South Africa

2000: New Zealand

2002: India and Sri Lanka (joint winners)

2004: West Indies