Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has warned England that it is tough at the top of world cricket.

England are currently ranked as the best test team in the world, but have failed to win a match yet in 2012, losing 3-0 to Pakistan and the first test of the current series against Sri Lanka.

Now Ponting, who oversaw Australia's domination of cricket during the last decade, believes that England could be at the start of a decline.

"It's really hard to stay up and dominate international cricket as long as we did a few years ago. When you're up the top and you've got everyone trying to chase you, it's hard to maintain that," said Australia's leading run scorer.

"It probably goes to show that England might have been at the start of the end of their cycle.

"England have got a taste of it up there for a little bit and have started to struggle a bit in their last couple of series."

Ponting is statistically the most successful captain of all time, and is also one of just three players to have amassed more than 13,000 test runs.