On Friday evening Ricky Ponting heard cheering in his hotel corridor. It was the sound of Australians celebrating England’s defeat by the Netherlands. On Saturday night, after his team had been trounced every bit as humiliatingly by West Indies, Australiacaptain had the grace to admit: "We’re in the same position now."

Australia have been drawn in the toughest group, and have to defeat Sri Lanka on Monday to qualify for the Super Eights.

Collingwood urges response against Pakistan Winning the ICC World Twenty20, to go with the World Cup and Champions Trophy which they hold, is one of Australia’s goals. But what will worry Ponting more is the damage done yesterday to two senior members of his Ashes party.

It might not be the sort of psychology that appeals to Help the Aged, but picking off veterans has to be done if Ashes series are to be won. In 2005 it was Jason Gillespie and Mick Kasprowicz who were hunted down, from the moment England tore into the Australians in the first international fixture of that summer. It, too, was a 20-over game.

No matter the format, however short, vital points can be scored. This time it was Chris Gayle, with 88 from only 50 balls, who started the latest campaign for mental disintegration, as the Australians themselves called it; but England will accept help from any source. And the two Australians who wobbled most were the two most experienced players in their greener-than-usual Ashes party, apart from Ponting himself.

Mike Hussey’s innings brought him 28 runs off 15 balls, which sounds impressive, but it was far from so. He is 34, and his career path has been set on an unwaveringly downward path since he went off to the first IPL. But he is booked to bat at number four in the Tests, and Australia have no reserve batsman in their party — although the counties, of course, harbour ready-made replacements.

Hussey was dropped twice, the second time by Xavier Marshall when pushing the ball for six, then he inside-edged the next ball for four.

Yet his worst moment came when Andre Fletcher skied the new white ball to mid-wicket where Hussey back-pedalled a little, but was outwardly confident enough to wave mid-on away. Then the ball went through his hands: he barely got a finger on it. The elder Hussey had missed a similar skier in the last Melbourne Test. Nothing is more likely to convince a cricketer that his time has passed.

David Warner, playing only because Andrew Symonds had been sent home, and David Hussey, neither in the Ashes party, played Australia’s two best innings. Ponting, disturbed by Jerome Taylor’s bouncers, lost his grip when he aimed to mid-wicket; and Michael Clarke slashed to third man, Sulieman Benn, who was having a pull-your-finger-out day, like most of his team.

Restricting Australia to 169, on a real belter, was "acceptable", said Gayle. Whereupon, like Wild West gunslingers, he and Fletcher fired their opening volleys at the Australian bowlers, as they had done at England’s in the Stanford game, with 133 off 11.3 overs. Gayle played one of the finest short-form innings, hitting Lee for 27 in one over, and afterwards claimed he had benefited from the second IPL.

The last time Lee had bowled at the Oval he had been pounded around the terraces by Kevin Pietersen. Gayle struck him further still: of the three sixes he lashed in Lee’s third over, a pull went out of the ground, and an on drive would have gone even further but for a very tall building. Lee is 32, and has added little over the years except a slow bouncer; he is scarcely more subtle than Andrew Flintoff. It was a good day, therefore, for Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus and Stuart Clark.

Neither Lee nor Mitchell Johnson swung the ball, although the afternoon was all cloud, but Johnson exerted some control and was not thrashed like Lee, whose first three overs cost 51. But none of the Australian bowlers had an answer to the aggression of Gayle and Fletcher: as England learnt in 2005, the more that Australians are attacked, the more fallible they are.