In cricket, when things are going well, nobody moves.

Shift in your seat or duck to the toilet with a teammate in the 90s, and you better hope they don’t get out.

The same goes when teams are winning.

Losers chop and change in search of answers, but winners stand pat so as not to risk messing with whatever delicate balance they have working for them.

Since Pat Cummins took over as captain for the 2021/22 summer, Australia’s men’s team has played 32 Tests for 20 wins, six draws and six losses, including an Ashes win at home, an Ashes retention away, a World Test Championship, and only one lost series (last year in India).

In that span, just 22 men have filled the potentially 352 playing slots for Australia, including six debutants.

Middle-order batter Travis Head said that consistency and the convivial atmosphere within the locker room it brings, highlighted in the upcoming third season of Prime Video docuseries The Test, is a privilege of success.

“[It’s created by] everyone playing well at the same time,” he told ABC Sport.

“Continuity is a great thing. Guys in form, guys playing well and then off the back of some performances and good series and a winning dynamic, it lends itself to keeping that group together for a period of time, which has been nice.

But that admittedly cosy stasis can come back to bite further down the road.

We saw it when Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist and Brett Lee played their final Tests in the space of two years.

Australia won less than half of its next 33 Tests after Hayden’s departure in January 2009 and handed debuts to 21 players in that time, a third of whom played fewer than five Tests, as they searched desperately for answers.

It feels like there could be a similar reckoning coming.

Of the 22 men’s Test players since the last Ashes in Australia, just six are currently under 30 — Marnus Labuschagne, Cameron Green, Matt Renshaw, Todd Murphy, Jhye Richardson and Matthew Kuhnemann — and of those six, only Labuschagne (who turns 30 next month) and Green are regulars.

Looking at the players who have been in squads without playing a game yet, only back-up wicketkeeper Josh Inglis and express paceman Lance Morris are yet to join the tricenarian club.

“There’ll be some change coming at certain points,” Head said.

“At some point some of the older guys will slowly transition and then you hope you get get consistency as quickly as you can and make it as seamless as possible.”

David Warner’s recent retirement left the team with an interesting dilemma. Selectors could …

1. 1.Force a current player out of position to open to accommodate the return of one of the only players in the squad born after John Howard became prime minister, 24-year-old Green
2. 2.Recall Cameron Bancroft or Marcus Harris, both of whom have had multiple chances at the top of the order without setting the world aflame
3. 3.Bring in a brand new face and start the transition to the next era

They opted for the first choice, shifting Steve Smith to open and make way at number four for Green, who had lost his spot as first-choice all-rounder to Mitch Marsh during the Ashes in England.