No plans to coach Kolkata, says Waugh

Steve Waugh, the former Australia captain, has said he has no plans at the moment to coach Kolkata Knight Riders, the IPL team that on Thursday sacked John Buchanan as its director of cricket. Waugh's name has been doing the rounds along with those of two fellow former Australian cricketers, Dav Whatmore and Michael Bevan.

"Twenty20 is an exciting format," Waugh said. "It's surely captured people's imagination [and] I like watching it. But coaching-wise I'm not so sure. It's not my priority yet.

"I don't know about the future but at the moment I am certainly not doing it as I have no time," he said on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi to launch the India chapter of the Steve Waugh Foundation Global.

Waugh has no coaching experience but has close links with Kolkata - he has set up homes for children in the city and is a regular, and hugely popular, visitor there. His profile in Kolkata is very different to that of Buchanan, who antagonised local fans by overseeing the team's disastrous season - one in which the local hero, Sourav Ganguly, was stripped of the team captaincy.

Opinion over Buchanan's coaching style has been split but on Thursday Chris Gayle, the West Indies captain who also plays for Kolkata, said he had learned a "lot of good points" from working under Buchanan. "Whenever you are around someone different, you tend to learn different things," Gayle told reporters at The Oval ahead of his team's World Twenty20 semi-final.

"Sometimes you can take it back to your country. It was something different for me and it was good," Gayle said. "A lot of good points were made there. The experience was really good."

Buchanan was released from his contract by the Kolkata franchise on Thursday after weeks of speculation following a disastrous season when the team ended bottom of the table and was plagued by a series of off-field controversies. No replacement has been announced as yet.