New Delhi: The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced the introduction of official ratings for players at a function here Wednesday.

The ICC will take over the widely accepted unofficial ratings run by PriceWaterhouse Cooper since 1987.

?From today the ICC rankings will be the official guide to the relative merits of the ten Test playing nations,? ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed said at the function which introduced a new sponsor, LG, for the exercise.

?The ICC will build on the same formula and methodology used by PWC for the last 18 years for the player rankings,? he said.

Rankings will be available for batsmen, bowlers and allrounders in Tests and one-dayers.

They will run alongside the ICC ratings for Test and one-day teams. The ICC Test championship was launched in May 2001 and the one-day championship started in October 2002.

Indian captain Sourav Ganguly and former skippers Sunil Gavaskar and Krishnamachari Srikkanth were also present on the occasion.

Sourav said that while turn-around knocks by the likes of Mohammed Kaif in a one-dayer might not be properly reflected in the player rankings but said what mattered to him most was the team rankings. (PTI)