Cricket needs someone from completely outside the game to take the role of chief executive when David Richards' steps down from his position with the International Cricket Council.

New Zealand Cricket chief executive Christopher Doig told a media briefing in Christchurch today that the position should be looked at in the same way that the International Olympic Committee or FIFA would look for a chief executive.

"The job needs someone with highly-tuned diplomatic and corporate skills," he said.

Doig said that criticism directed at the ICC in the past that it was moribund and slow to react was probably fair enough but before making criticism people needed to look at where the ICC had been and how far it had come.

To start out as an offshoot of the MCC which was directed by the MCC to the fully-fledged international organisation it was now was significant.

But with the greater emphasis going on development of the game and the larger amounts of money now coming into cricket it needed more staff and different approaches.

The best person for the job was likely to come from outside the sport which he said had some "internecine issues" that would make it difficult for anyone from within cricket to deal with.

Doig was delighted with developments taking place in the New Zealand game and said the work done by Alec Astle in growing the game for children was "the most compelling thing we have done.

"The growth of the development programme is enormous and we are struggling to keep up the resources," he said.

But the scheme was clearly catering for a need that was there. Doig said $2 million needed to be spent in developing the scheme and that was the next phase of the programme.

Doig said that it had always been his, and the board's, goal to have NZC finances independent of gate receipts.

"We're not far away from that," he said.

The ability to pre-sell television rights for five years would help in achieving that goal.

© CricInfo