• Captain still believes teams are well matched
• Ponting says Johnson needs to be managed carefully

The present is tough enough for Ricky Ponting without the past tapping him on the shoulder too, but today the weight of history felt as burdensome as it can ever have done during a heady 133-Test career. No Australia captain has led his side to defeat at Lord’s since Bill Woodfull in 1934; no Australia captain has lost two series in England since Billy Murdoch in the 19th century. For a team that makes much of its heritage, these are troubling times.

Very little went right for Ponting here. He was given out caught when he did not hit it, he remains 25 runs short of passing Allan Border’s Australian Test record of 11,174 runs, and he was forced to juggle an attack in which the spearhead went awol and the spinner dislocated a finger on his bowling hand. Throw in a dropped catch at slip, a mild show of dissent and the unstinting derision of the crowd, and it felt like the Lord’s karmic wheel had decided to whirr furiously in one direction after spinning gently for 75 years in the other.

“I got my first clap as I got off the stage from my post-game interview,” said Ponting with a smile. “It took me cracking a joke to get a laugh out of the crowd. I’m not sure what all the animosity was there. They seemed to take great pleasure in me dropping that catch. There were about 15 replays in two overs: I was counting them. Hopefully I won a few hearts over at the end of the day, but I won’t lose any sleep about it.”

More likely to induce insomnia is the current state of Australia’s bowling attack, in particular the form of Mitchell Johnson, who took three for 200 in this Test while leaking more than five an over and bowled as poorly as any Australia seamer since Ponting’s uncle, Greg Campbell, took one for 82 off 14 overs at Headingley in 1989.

“Troy [Cooley, Australia's bowling coach] is obviously working really closely with Mitchell,” said Ponting. “What you don’t want to do with youngish blokes – Mitch has only played 20-odd Tests and is still pretty new to fast bowling – is fill their heads full of too much. We have to be careful how we manage him, and hopefully we’ll see some improvement from him in Northampton, if he does happen to play that game.”

Australia’s three-day match against Northamptonshire, starting on Friday, now assumes greater importance than the tourists could ever have imagined. Johnson’s form has been a worry ever since he wasted the second new ball on the last evening in Cardiff, but Brett Lee has not started bowling after picking up a rib injury in the warm-up game against England Lions at Worcester and Shane Watson – more of a batting all-rounder – is regarded by many as an injury waiting to happen.

Ponting’s hope, though, is that Johnson can recover from the battering his bowling analysis and supposedly frail temperament have taken in the past few days. “It was only a couple of games ago that he was bowling as well as anyone going around,” he said. “It’s not as if he’s lost everything he’s ever had. He’ll work hard over the next 10 days to give himself the best chance to keep improving.”

Today, though, Ponting was consoling himself with the thought that Cardiff was a closer reflection of the difference between the sides than Lord’s, saying: “It was only a week ago that we dominated the Test match. It’s important that all the players don’t forget that. I said right from the start I didn’t think there would be a lot between the sides. It’s grabbing the momentum when you can and running with it for as long as you can that’s going to decide this series.

“If you look at this game, they grabbed the momentum on day one, and we found it hard to wrest that back. A lot of Test matches are won in the first hour and we were a fair bit off at the start. There are fundamental skill errors we have made, and I’m not just talking about the bowling. We have to make sure we’re a whole lot better when we start the third one.”