Andrew Hilditch, who once fended off four mighty West Indians for a day to save a Test match, doesn't need to prove his physical courage. But as a chairman of selectors, he has often seemed strangely timid. As the Summer of Kidding Ourselves came crashing down on Saturday, the first chickens of Hilditch's unconventional relationship with Ricky Ponting started coming home to roost. There will be plenty more this summer.

Ponting is obviously a forceful character who has been able to get the Test teams he wanted. Hilditch and the selectors have played a team role, preferring to ‘work with' the captain rather than fighting or overruling him. There's a lot to be said for this kind of partnership, but it's always a matter of balance. Questions have to be asked about whether Hilditch's panel have been too conciliatory and not independent enough.

Four series after losing the Ashes, Australia is still playing with one opening batsman and a middle-order like a Swiss cheese. The problems exposed in England in 2009 have been magnified in England in 2010.

Shane Watson, a stopgap during the last Ashes series when Phil Hughes was given shelter from England's pacemen, surprised many with his consistent performances over 12 months. But the inflationary effect of scoring runs against raw, often substandard bowling in the last Australian season has not been taken into account. Whenever Watson has had to face the moving ball, we are reminded yet again that he is a number six. Simon Katich is a real opener. Australia needs another.

Watson has looked good against weak teams in part because Ponting, Mike Hussey and Marcus North have been so inconsistent. The long-term worries hovering over Ponting and Hussey have been well documented. North, simply, has to go. If he was averaging 35 by scoring 35 each innings, he would be doing a job. By blazing a century every eight innings interspersed by failures, he is more often than not letting his team down. Watson should be batting in his place, and an opener, such as Hughes or Phil Jaques, should be partnering Katich.

Australia's bowling, while diminished by injuries, also bears the mark of Ponting's guiding hand. Brett Lee getting another contract and the persistence with Mitchell Johnson show personal preferences floating dangerously free of the anchor of factual evidence. If struggling young Test batsmen are routinely dropped so that they can develop their games at Shield level, why not bowlers? For more than a year, Johnson has been a prime case for tough love. In Leeds on the weekend, his inability to take advantage of a swing bowler's paradise was one of the main reasons Australia could not recover from their dreadful first-day batting. While Doug Bollinger seems to be a little haunted, Stuart Clark-like, by the fear that he doesn't have Ponting's full confidence, Johnson is a protected species.

This is where a strong selection panel should come in: to make tough decisions with foresight. A captain is always focused mainly on winning next game. Selectors, as Australian panels under Lawrie Sawle and Trevor Hohns were, sometimes have a duty to come in over the top of the captain and make decisions for the longer-term good. Hilditch, who once called the still-playing Adam Gilchrist a ‘hero' of his, gives the impression that he might be just a little in awe of Ponting.

The time to make the hard decisions was after the last Ashes series and through the home summer. Australia squibbed it, and now it's too late. India is no place to revamp a batting order, so we are stuck with the decisions made a year ago. Ponting is a man of great faith. If that faith is borne out against India and England, then he deserves all the praise that will come his way.

But for now, it's looking wobbly. Pakistan deserved their first win over Australia after 15 years. But no Pakistani would have been smiling as broadly as Andrew Strauss.