One of the numbers in the Barmy Army’s Ashes songbook teases Ricky Ponting that England contains antiques older than his country. The oldest player on either side in this series will probably appreciate a reference to comparative youth. The name “Ricky” still savours of boy prodigy or teen idol, but Ponting has surveyed his dressing room these past few years with the aura of the venerable.

The members of that dressing room have returned Ponting’s gaze with something approaching awe. Like the later Allan Border, he has become captain to a circle of cricketers who grew up watching him play. They look to him for the kind of craftsman’s runs he has provided at Cardiff and for the talismanic link he represents to past success.

Cricket can be unforgiving. Ponting perished yesterday to the first error he made, a slight misjudgment of Monty Panesar’s length. That he had 150 on the board will have been a consolation to Ponting, although not as much it would be to other batsmen. He is an avowed perfectionist, almost a puritan of batting — one of the reasons he has never warmed to Twenty20, which he argues masks technical deficiencies as it privileges big hitting.

At the indoor nets where I often train in Melbourne, the walls are dotted with the usual paraphernalia including bats, bits and bobs, and one photo from a newspaper that the owner has had laminated: Ponting cover-driving, big stride, perfect balance, low to the ground, bat at the end of the follow-through, elbow still high. “Because that’s how to do it,” the owner explained when I asked why.

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So it is. There have been better batting exhibitions than Ponting’s in the past two days, but it is hard to imagine a better batting tutorial, both in terms of stroke production and organisation. There were even some strokes not normally associated with Ponting: from Andrew Flintoff, a soundless leg glance for four and a genuine hook for six.

England successfully resisted the temptation to bowl too straight at him, nagging away outside off stump, but Ponting was up to that, puncturing the covers with five boundaries. He tormented Graeme Swann particularly, picking 31 effortless runs from the 36 balls he received, while Simon Katich scored 30 from the same bowler, sweating over 94.

By Ponting’s consistency as a Test batsman — passing fifty better than once every three innings — he has made the splendid commonplace. About the captaincy, more doubts are harboured, although they might be out of date.

Ponting’s leadership still attracts plenty of criticism in Australia, particularly from former players who remember their era as one of non-stop flair and innovation. For sure, there remains some truth to the assertion that he does not deviate far from basics. But captaincy is in the main not a public event — it is the leadership in a dressing room, in a hotel, on a team bus, at training. And in this respect Ponting is, from all accounts, far better than he was.

Ponting is no arm-around-the-shoulder captain with a degree in people, the famous Bachelor of Brearleyism. In his early years he could be terse, gruff, not from lack of feeling, but because the expression of it did not come naturally.

Jason Gillespie tells a story about being omitted from the Trent Bridge Test four years ago. Ponting accosted him at training and said simply: “Has Trevor [Hohns, the chairman of selectors] spoken to you yet?” When Gillespie indicated that Hohns had, Ponting grunted “OK” and walked away.

Flash forward to last week when, just before the Cardiff Test, Mike Hussey, Michael Clarke and Ponting addressed their team in turn about the significance of the Ashes to them. The earnest Hussey delivered a poem, the polished Clarke did a video presentation, but Ponting spoke simply and frankly, making it clear that he was every bit as proud and more of what the team had accomplished recently in South Africa. Some of this was doubtless the sportsman’s preference for the recent over “ancient history”, but it was also a reflection of how he has been rejuvenated by the vim and vitality of his young side.

If Ponting did not set Statsguru, on Cricinfo, on fire in South Africa, he has perhaps never looked a more authoritative captain, because the authority was yielded as well as commanded, there being no Warne, Gilchrist or Hayden, however unwittingly, to dilute it. Not since Border in his Horatius years has an Australia captain described an XI more truly as “my team”.

Ponting has been made over off the field also by a new manager, James Henderson, a media buyer.

On the day Ponting was appointed Australia captain, he was costumed as an aerosol can of deodorant for one of his many endorsements. Since signing up with Henderson, he has projected an image more in keeping with the office occupied by Bradman and Benaud, and less like that of a sandwich board for hire.

Through a website, runrickyrun.org, fans can even sponsor Ponting per run this summer for charity; with a little creative accountancy, Stuart Broad’s half-volleys could prove to be tax deductible.

Ponting inevitably will have been said to have “made a statement” with his 150, as though this is itself a statement rather than a particularly insipid cliché. For Ponting has always made statements this way — what matters is that he now makes statements by other means.

Gideon Haigh is Australia’s leading cricket writer and the author of numerous books, including Mystery Spinner: The Story of Jack Iverson. He will be writing regularly in The Times throughout the Ashes