A long winter looms for England

Lawrence Booth writes in the Wisden Cricketer that England's batsmen need to make more centuries if they are to pose a challenge in South Africa. The England batting has made only two hundreds in the five Ashes Tests and five ODIs so far.

The problem is not that England players can’t score runs. Look at the scores between 50 and 74 in the Ashes. There were 24 of them, of which 16 belonged to England. The problem is that no one is doing what Ricky Ponting did last night and deciding to win the game by themselves. Would Ponting try a reverse-sweep on 35, as Strauss did yesterday? Or try to reverse-paddle a second successive delivery, as Eoin Morgan did to his cost?