Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting the Australian top-order needs to score “big runs” after the world champions went 1-0 down in an ODI series against away to England. The 2019 World Cup hosts defeated Australia by three wickets in the first of a five-match series at The Oval on Wednesday.

Although England batting collapsed during the chase, Australia was always in trouble after being dismissed for meager 214, with spin again proving their weakness as England specialist slow-bowlers Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid accounted for five members of their top seven between them.

Glenn Maxwell (62) and Ashton Agar (40) did the repair work for the hosts with their sixth-wicket stand of 84 but that wasn’t enough to change the course of the game. Ponting, one of the outstanding batsmen of his generation, has joined the backroom staff of new Australia coach and former Test team-mate Justin Langer for the tour.

Reflecting on Australia’s drop to 90 for five on Wednesday, Ponting said: “It highlighted again the importance of our top-order batsman taking responsibility and getting some big runs.”

ALSO READ: Ricky Ponting feels Australian cricket culture is not in danger

After the early dismissal of Travis Head, Aaron Finch and Shaun Marsh put on 40 for the second wicket only for both batsmen to be dismissed by Ali. The former skipper explained, “We lost an early wicket but I thought Marsh and Finch’s partnership looked really promising. But both of them getting out in successive overs to Moeen Ali, and all of a sudden we are behind the eight ball. These players need to be hard on themselves and work out how they can improve on a daily basis.”

Nevertheless, Ponting was confident of an improvement in the next game, he said, “It didn’t happen (Wednesday) but there is certainly enough skill and talent there to push on and win some games through the remainder of this series. Being on a tour in England you get four hours on the bus with the boys and I will be able to sit down with the young blokes and talk cricket.”

This is Australia’s first international campaign since a controversial ball-tampering saga when former captain Smith and his deputy Warner were given year-long bans after during the third Test in Cape Town in March that also saw Cameron Bancroft getting banned for nine months for applying sandpaper to the ball.

Darren Lehmann also gave his resignation as coach to be replaced by fellow former Australia batsman Langer.