Vaughan demands centuries

Captain Michael Vaughan has called for a greater effort from England's batsmen to start converting promising starts into centuries if they are to progress to the closing stages of the World Cup.

Of the remaining eight teams in the tournament, only England and Bangladesh are yet to register a century in the competition as it gets to the crunch time in the Super Eight stage, but Vaughan wants an immediate improvement if England are to overcome Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

"Where we have struggled is that we haven't got players to 100, and that's the one area we've been lacking," said Vaughan, who is yet to score a century himself in 81 one-day internationals.

"If a guy gets to 50 or 60, if he goes on to get a hundred we generally go on to get a good score as we did in Australia, but over here guys have been getting to 40, 50 or 60 and getting out and we need to improve."

Indeed the only players to have reached three figures since England suffered a 5-0 series whitewash to Sri Lanka last summer are Paul Collingwood (twice) and Ed Joyce during the unexpected triumph in the Commonwealth Bank series.

That record of three centuries in 22 matches is one England will need to improve quickly if they are to set Sri Lanka, one of the fancied teams for the World Cup, anything like a competitive target.

Vaughan is especially eager to break his duck at this level having scored only 78 runs in his four innings during the tournament, including single-figure scores in his last two matches against Kenya and Ireland.

"In the two games over the last week I haven't played well," he admitted.

"I felt in decent nick in St Lucia and I felt in good nick in St Vincent and I feel in good touch in the nets, but that's irrelevant if you don't take that out in the middle.

"I feel it's about time I got a good score for the team. It's only two games because before that I was playing nicely so I'm not that concerned but I'd love to get a score to help the team reach a good target."