Ganguly has coaching ambitions

Sourav Ganguly aims to stick around for four or five more years, in the hope of leading India to the forefront of international cricket, and would subsequently love to coach the Indian team, according to an interview published in Reader's Digest magazine. It also quotes him as saying that Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Steve Waugh are his favourite cricketers.

When asked about his mentor, Ganguly mentions his father, while also admitting that he was a huge fan of Pete Sampras, who retired last year after winning a record 14 Grand Slam tennis titles. And Kolkata's favourite son also springs a surprise when he rates the victory at Adelaide in December 2003 - "They were a special side, a strong team - indeed the best" - ahead of the remarkable come-from-behind heroics at Eden Gardens in March 2001.

Ganguly's ascent to the captaincy after making his Test debut in 1996 - he had been a peripheral part of the tour to Australia four years earlier - was meteoric, and he admits in the interview that he has no immediate plans to make way for the younger generation. "I have not even thought of retirement," he says. "I want to play for another four, five years. I want to take Indian cricket forward and concentrate on more wins for India.

"At some stage I also want to be involved with the game, may be as a coach," he adds. "I have been lucky to have a good team under me, with lots of talented young matchwinners like [Virender] Sehwag, Zaheer [Khan], Dravid. [VVS] Laxman's arrived as a player and there's Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan [Singh]. Anil Kumble has bowled a way I have never seen before."

Ganguly also doesn't run shy of taking some of the credit for the team's success. "Because when you are captain, you have a lot to do both on and off the field," he says. He is also effusive in his praise of Dravid - "He is a very good player and he is a good human being" - who made his debut in that same Lord's Test eight years ago.

Ganguly and John Wright have earned many plaudits in recent years for fast-tracking talent into the team, and ignoring the pernicious state-wise bias that used to be an endemic part of Indian cricket. "There is no quota system," says Ganguly emphatically when asked about it. "I've been captain for four years. I've not seen any of that. I don't know whether it existed when I got back into the team. But today it doesn't."

He also talks at length about how fatherhood has changed him - "Previously, you did things for yourself and your wife ... When you have a little girl you do everything for her" - and reveals how pictures of the goddess Kali and his wife and daughter can be found on his hotel-room table whenever he goes on tour.