I feel Australia's transition is going to be very painful: Aakash Chopra

Former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra has asserted that the Australian team’s transition is going to be very painful across the formats when their veteran players like Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, and Steve Smith retire from the game.

Speaking exclusively on his YouTube channel, Chopra reckoned that the Australian national team has a poor second line of pace bowling in the absence of Starc, Cummins, and Hazlewood in the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup 2026. Notably, Starc announced his T20I retirement a few months earlier.

For the unversed, Australia got eliminated from the mega event without making it to the Super 8 stage. Also, the former Indian cricketer also voiced his opinion on the Australian Test team not having a proper back-up spinner for Nathan Lyon in the longest format of the game.

"I feel Australia's transition is going to be very painful. The great powerhouse is going to struggle. If you look at their situation currently, Mitchell Starc has retired, and Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood got injured. So what was your second line of fast bowling? Xavier Bartlett, Sean Abbott and Nathan Ellis - there is no might," Chopra said on his YouTube channel.

"If we look at Test cricket, do you see any spinner after Nathan Lyon? If you look at T20 cricket, Adam Zampa is their best spinner, but is he the best in the world, and who is the second spinner - Matthew Kuhnemann? Where is the depth? Even if we look at Test cricket, the golden days are behind them already," he added.

"They have a quartet - three fast bowlers and Nathan Lyon, but they will also stop at some stage. Where is the next list? There is no spinner at par with Nathan Lyon. There is no one even half his level," he stated.

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