Cummins preparing for team's new age after Warner

Australia's world champion men's Test team will undergo its most significant structural change in several years when David Warner calls time later this week, but captain Pat Cummins admits he's surprised the turnover hasn't been more marked.

As Warner conspiratorially hinted at his farewell media conference at the SCG on Monday, the fact the unchanged line-up Australia takes into the final NRMA Insurance Test against Pakistan from tomorrow boasts an average age of 33 years four months suggests others could be nearing the end.

"It might not just be me (retiring), but no-one (else has) said anything so I think it's just me," Warner said, with no subsequent suggestion from any of his teammates they were following him into Test retirement.

But given this iteration of the outfit is the most senior (on average) to represent Australia in almost 100 years, Warner's cheeky aside might have contained more than a kernel of truth.

With only four Tests scheduled between the end of the upcoming SCG fixture and the start of the 2024-25 Australia summer – two at home against West Indies later this month, and two in New Zealand in February-March – it's reasonable to assume others are eyeing an exit point.

After Travis Head celebrated his 30th birthday on the final day of the Boxing Day Test last week, Marnus Labuschagne (29 years 194 days) is the only current member of the starting XI aged in his twenties.

The replacement of 24-year-old Cameron Green with fellow allrounder Mitchell Marsh (32 years 74 days) earlier this year has further bumped-up the group's collective seniority, to make it the oldest to take the field since the third Test of the 1928-29 Ashes series when the average age was 33 years five months.

And while that's significantly more sprightly than the oldest-ever Australia men's Test team – the XI for the 1926 Ashes match at Lord's which showed an average age a tick under 36 – Cummins' observation is public acknowledgement of impending change.

But the 30-year-old skipper, third-youngest member of his team after Labuschagne and Head, indicated that speed of transformation is not expected to be sharp.

"Realistically there is going to be some rate of change over the next couple of years," Cummins said today. "We probably thought it was going to happen a little bit sooner, but everyone is hanging on.

"After this block of Test matches, we don't play again until next summer.

"So I don't see anything in the immediate future that is going to change."

The colour of the national Test team will take on a slightly greener hue after Warner's departure with 31-year-olds Marcus Harris and Cameron Bancroft, as well as comparative junior Matthew Renshaw (27) at the forefront of potential replacements.

But as Cummins foreshadowed, there's no suggestion his line-up will undergo radical change any time soon even though Usman Khawaja (37 years 15 days), Nathan Lyon (36 years 43 days) and Steve Smith (34 years 214 days) are clearly in their autumn years.

Prior to Warner's announcement he was walking away from the Test and ODI formats, the most recent regular member of the Test team to step down was then-skipper Tim Paine who called time for personal reasons in 2021.

The last time an Australia men's Test team farewelled multiple long-serving members from an established line-up was on completion of the 2006-07 Ashes whitewash when Shane Warne (37), Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer (both 36) walked together into retirement.

That led to a drop in the team's average age by more than a year at their next assignment, but it also signalled the start of a period of instability as veterans Adam Gilchrist, Stuart MacGill, Brett Lee, Matthew Hayden, Simon Katich, Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey all upped-stumps over ensuing years.

It saw the team slide down the global Test rankings until the current crop ushed in a new golden era, and Cummins remains confident the lessons learned from that bitter period will ensure better management of ageing personnel in coming years.

"The good thing is with the bowling group, we've always got people like Scotty Boland or Lance Morris or Michael Neser being in or out of the squad and it (managing change) has always been seamless," Cummins said.

"The job now is whoever comes into the side in the batting group, I'm sure they're not going to be totally unknown even if it's someone from outside the group now.

"We play a lot of cricket with these guys.

"Hopefully they fit in straightaway and they're a stable part of this team."

A key reason for that "seamless" transition is the playing environment that exists under current head coach Andrew McDonald and his support staff, whereby the collective seniority of players is recognised and they are granted licence to oversee their own preparation.

Warner provided a prime example of that approach in the lead-up to his 112th and final Test appearance.

The opener might have missed out during both innings of the Boxing Day match where he scored 38 and six, but he has barely picked up a bat in the four days since Australia's 79-run win at the MCG while other members of the squad have trained with varying intensity at the SCG.

Warner claimed that culture of empowerment was a vital ingredient in the ODI team's World Cup triumph in India late last year after a shaky start to their campaign.

"The team, not just under the leadership of Patty (Cummins), but the coach, Andrew McDonald, everything's just so calm and relaxed inside the team," Warner said on Monday.

"We go out there, we're adults, we back ourselves to train to the best of our ability and then go out there and perform.

"There's never any added pressure.

"It's the same (attitude) 'come in and get what you have to done'.

"When we lost two games in a row in India, the bond just got stronger with each other.

"It's not by fluke or by chance that we were able to get to where we were."

Cummins said while that approach fits well with the experienced profile of the current group, it won't remain that way as fresher faces join the fold with the ageing cohort undergoing gradual renewal.

And he harked back to his own arrival on the Test scene as an 18-year-old in 2011 when Australia was struggling to replace the generation of greats who had departed in close proximity.

"We're very much giving a pretty long leash to our guys, they've been playing a pretty long time, they know their own game and we don't really want to prescribe anything," Cummins said of the contemporary approach.

"But with younger guys, I look back to when I was 18 or 19, I was desperate for advice and to listen to some coaches and senior guys.

"Maybe a bit more hands on and every personality that comes in is a little bit different, so there might be some adjustment there.

"But hopefully whatever happens we've got plenty of senior guys around and those new guys should be pretty seamless."

NRMA Insurance Test series v Pakistan

First Test: Australia won by 360 runs

Second Test: Australia won by 79 runs

Third Test: January 3-7, SCG (10.30am AEDT)

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Steve Smith, Mitch Starc, David Warner

Pakistan squad: Shan Masood (c), Aamir Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi