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England have been drawn to play South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka in the group stage of this year's ICC Champions Trophy.

Paul Collingwood's one-day side have been placed in Group B, with holders Australia, India, West Indies and hosts Pakistan in Group A.

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

The two top teams in each group after the round-robin format is complete will progress to the semi-finals.

ICC Champions Trophy Draw (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)



I think we really needed this tournament, am gutted we not in this one.

They decided this tournament will only be for the top 8 teams in the world. Incentive for Zim to improve their ranking...

From what I can discover the format has changed this time to 8 teams rather than the 10 that competed in the last tournament in 2006.

This means, quite simply, that the top 8 teams go through to the Trophy and the 9th and 10th placed sides don't get an invite.

Presumably if Australia are still unprepared to go to Pakistan at the time of this tournament then the 9th placed side will be asked to play in their place, which I assume is Bangladesh ??

Yeah, Bangladesh are ranked higher than us. They are a decent ODI side (although you wouldn't know it from this series against South Africa) and can give top teams a run for their money more consistently than Zimbabwe can.

While it is disappointing we didn't qualify - this is one of the few series we can see Zimbabwe on ordinary television, I remember Taylor's 50 against West Indies in '06 quite clearly - we didn't have a realistic chance of passing the first stage let alone winning it.

We need more bilateral series, even 5 ODI's against Kenya or Bangladesh would help, I think they are two series where we would come close to clean sweeping them, but what we really need are top countries touring or hosting. The India series will be so important. If Zimbabwe could somehow sneak away with a win in one of the ODI's it will show enormous progress. Likewise would a draw in one of the Test's, but I think that is asking a lot.

this is a big blow zim r not in the tournment this was a perfect oppurtunity to show the world that zimbabwe cricket is rebuilding and turning out to be a decent side.