With 18 different players opening the batting since Andrew Strauss retired in 2012, England need more steel at the top of the order if they are to win back the urn. Dan Whiting reports.

Class: Andrew Strauss

Channel 4 recently showed an outstanding documentary on the 2005 Ashes. Many words, stories and urban myths have done the rounds of the cricketing cognoscenti in both hemispheres but it struck me watching it how England would cry out for an opening pair of the class of Strauss and Trescothick in the modern age.
Andrew Strauss retired from Test cricket on the 29th August 2012. In the ...