“Do you think they’ll drop him?” Michael Vaughan asked the question as a joke and of course that is what it was, but Muttiah Muralitharan, the most potent bowler in cricket, has been emasculated by the Australian juggernaut every bit as surely as Andrew Flintoff last year. After the first Australia innings in the Hobart Test, as Sri Lanka faced a defeat as crushing as in their first match in Brisbane, his figures were three for 310.

The average does not take much working out. He did pick up his fourth wicket of the series as Australia chose to bat again, and with batsmen on the hunt for quick runs others may have followed on the fourth day today, but it looks likely that Muralitharan will have to wait until the first Test against England in his home city of Kandy to break Shane Warne’s world record of 708 wickets – he has 704. It is hard to think that the psychological equilibrium even of this most optimistic and resilient of cricketers has not been at least a little disturbed.

Muralitharan will console himself with the facts that England’s batsmen are not Australians and that the Asgiriya ground in Kandy is a very different place from either the Gabba or the Bellerieve Oval. England start the first match of the tour tomorrow against a strong team to be led by the Test batsman, Tillekeratne Dilshan, with only a minor fitness concern at this stage, namely the stiff back that James Anderson (in common with elderly cricket correspondents) invariably gets after a long plane journey.

The battle for fast-bowling places is exciting the keenest interest. It would be very odd indeed, perverse, in fact, if it is not confirmed today that Stephen Harmison will officially become the sixteenth member of the touring team, but a final decision was not being announced until Peter Moores, the head coach, had received a final report from Ottis Gibson, the fast-bowling coach who has been watching his former Durham opening partner like a personal minder. Harmison has taken at least two wickets in each of the four innings in which he has bowled in his two first-class matches for Highveld Lions in South Africa, proving his fitness and his penetration on his brave return to a land where he was embarrassingly ineffective when he toured with England in 2004-05.

Harmison has wickets in the bag now and his confidence is high, but the more consistent Matthew Hoggard will have his own wellbeing to prove this week in Colombo. He was, as usual, in magnanimous mood when talking yesterday about the healthy rivalry between the bowlers. “With the set of young bowlers we have, everyone is under pressure to perform and that is useful for English cricket,” he said. “I have always said you need to prove yourself every time you bowl. You can’t rest on your laurels and you have to keep improving and performing. It’s going to be a difficult one for Michael Vaughan and the selectors. I thought the boys did really well in the one-dayers here and the results were more than good. The young bowlers showed a lot of character to come back from a disastrous start.”

Hoggard lost his place after the first Test of the previous tour to Sri Lanka four years ago, but he learnt the lesson admirably and he is a wiser bowler now, with off cutters as a variant to his outswingers. “I have been to a lot of sub-continental places since that tour and grown a lot as a bowler, and I’m confident I can perform in Sri Lanka,” he said. “The heat and humidity drains your energy, the pitches will be suited to Muttiah Muralitharan more than the quicks and they will be slow and low, so you have to make sure you get your line and lengths right.”

Whether England’s batsmen can exploit any doubts opened up by the Australians is both debatable and doubtful, but Muralitharan is less of an ogre to them, perhaps, than he seemed four years ago here, when he was the difference between the teams. Muralitharan seemed philosophical in interviews about the manner in which he has been dominated in Australia, virtually an unprecedented experience for him. The likes of Mike Hussey, Adam Gilchrist and Michael Clarke played him well, he said, with understatement.

The fact is that they play everyone well. The retirements of Justin Langer, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne have made, it seems, almost no difference to their supremacy over everyone else. Phil Jaques has taken his chance with complete assurance, Stuart Clark had already shown against England last winter that he is much more than a poor man’s McGrath and Stuart MacGill has always been both a prodigious spinner of the ball and a consistent taker of wickets. He suffers by comparison with Warne only on grounds of temperament and accuracy.

Australia have not been beaten at home for 15 years. England and Sri Lanka can share experiences of what it is like to be mauled by them during the series next month that is bound to be altogether a closer contest.