Border and Taylor in Ashes inquest team

Allan Border and Mark Taylor, former captains of Ashes winning teams, are part of a committee looking into what went wrong in Australia's failed campaign in England.

Australian cricket is reviewing what needs to be done to resurrect the national team after it struggled against Michael Vaughan's England team losing the five-Test series 2-1.

Border and Taylor will be joined on the committee by Daryl Foster, former Western Australia coach; James Sutherland, Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive, and Michael Brown and Geoff Allardice, Cricket Australia management staff.

Ricky Ponting has been widely criticised with calls for his sacking from several high-profile cricketers. Dennis Lillee, former fast bowling great, this week called for Shane Warne to replace Ponting as Test captain as Australian cricket sets about rebuilding for the next Ashes series to be held in Australia in 2006-07.

But reports on Friday said Ponting was safe as captain as he had the full backing of Bob Merriman, CA chairman, and at least five board members.

"Ricky won't be going anywhere," a source close to the board told The Daily Telegraph.

Taylor said he would support Ponting. "He's the best man for the job," he told the newspaper.

A CA spokesman said team coach John Buchanan's role would be analysed as part of the sub-committee's review process.

The review began before the drawn fifth Test at The Oval, the CA spokesman said. "It's something that would have happened regardless of the result. It was always planned to do a review," the spokesman said.

While Border's panel is under no deadline to report back, CA hopes the verdict will be delivered by the end of next month, the newspaper said. The Daily Telegraph said apart from the coaching structure, with the possibility that batting and bowling specialists will be brought in to assist Buchanan, another issue to be addressed is beefing up the national talent identification program.

"The post-mortems have already begun with many people calling for a clearout of the older generation," Border was quoted in reports on Friday.

"In my opinion, this would be a mistake. Certainly half a dozen of the team will be looking anxiously over their shoulder and their performances will be under close scrutiny in the coming months."

"The speculation over Ricky Ponting's future as captain is ridiculous. He has gone from being the hero to the villain over the course of the series. He simply had the second-best side and when your bowling attack is not firing, any captain is going to struggle," said Border.