If 2007 World cup pools were based on team rankings in the 2003 world cup

[Robertinho]

5 years is definitely a long time, Richard. You don't think Australia will be much different when McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist and co retire? Big difference, buddy.

[Richard]

Err, yes - sometimes 5 years is a long time. Point is, all 3 of McGrath, Warne and Gilchrist are likely to retire within, probably, 2 years. In that event, 2 years is a long time.
Equally, you can have 5 years where little changes.
And it's not fair to try to compensate for one of these eventualities by biasing the points according to supposed strength of opposition.

[GIMH]

My honest opinion is this, and it's pretty simple -

In international cricket, in either form, there is no real way of fairly ranking the sides, because of the length of the Test cycle, and I feel that neither system really works. At least in One day cricket a side can claim to be World Champions. Test Cricket is quite subjective, as the "How would you rank the teams?" at the main board proves, and while most seem to agree with the Australia-England top 2, not all do, and a league system is the only way of fairly ranking teams, but a league system cannot realistically be used with such disparity in time between series.