Cricket may not be an Olympic sport, but New Zealand Cricket operations manager John Reid has a degree of sympathy for sports facing criticism in the post-Games witch-hunt.

Reid said he could not believe the criticism being offered by people who were obviously not aware of sporting structures in place in New Zealand.

"People are saying we should be teaching children to win from the outset and that we need to be more like the Australians," Reid said.

"The point they are missing is that all that we do in cricket is what the Australians do.

"Our cricket for young children is Kanga cricket which was developed by the Australians.

"And at the lowest levels, for kids who are six or seven, it is all about developing participation and skills. It is not all about winning at that age," he said.

It was the same for all sports.

The time to develop the winning attitude was in the high school years.

The other thing needing to be realised was that New Zealand was first and foremost a rugby country.

"Rugby gets all the athletes," Reid said.

"It takes a huge pool of athletes out of what is a small pool of sportspeople.

"Rugby shouldn't apologise for that. One of the reason why rugby is better coached here is that it is the national game. Just as when you go to Australia cricket is coached well there.

"And in England where cricket is the national summer game it is coached well there," he said.

Cricket in New Zealand was lucky because it was the preferred summer sport and had the resource base to develop.

With rugby on top, cricket and netball were next in line.

"The Olympic sports are the next tier down from that and don't have the resource base that other sports do.

"They are constantly in a battle for athlete capture, resources and expertise," he said.

People needed to remember that point when looking at reasons for levels of performance in Olympic sports, he said.

© CricInfo