‘I want to see India dominate for at least five years

India’s Test captain, Virat Kohli, has said the team has the ability to be the best in the world.

“I strongly want to see the Indian team dominate for at least five or six years,” Kohli told the Cricket Monthly. “We certainly have the talent. We certainly have the ability. All that it will take is how you manage that and keep them together.”Kohli, who took over the Indian Test captaincy after MS Dhoni’s retirement late last year, laid down his vision for his side.

“I want to create strong bonds. I want to create strong friendships in this unit. We live 250-280 days a year together so I want to create such an atmosphere where in the next ten years watching it from outside you would get to know this team is a united team. This team is a strongly knit unit. They want to play for each other. They don’t want to play for themselves. That is my vision.”

Kohli stressed his belief in aggressive cricket, and committed to “going for that victory even if it means that you have to literally struggle in the end to get a draw”.”We like playing the same brand of cricket,” Kohli said of the team he takes charge of, starting with the tour to Bangladesh later this month.

“The thing that I want to do and I can do in Test matches is free them from any kind of doubt. Free them from any kind of insecurity… On the field if you see them [Australia] play you feel like, ‘damn, that’s a unit, we really have to play our bloody best to beat these guys’. I want that to happen to Indian cricket. In Test matches we want to be the team to beat. It is just the mindset, sometimes we tend to go into that zone where the thinking is not right.”