New Zealand Cricket's hunt for a replacement for coach David Trist is about to start.

Advertisements are being placed tomorrow for the role which will take effect before New Zealand's tour to Pakistan scheduled for September this year.

Whoever is successful, the job is likely to be different in some respects to that done by both Trist and his predecessor Steve Rixon.

Candidates for the job are being asked to demonstrate that they have superior technical and analytical ability, and a desire to adopt the latest 'best practice' principles of coaching and performance enhancement.

The operations manager of NZC, John Reid, said today that the requirements for coaching the CLEAR Black Caps have changed with the maturing of the senior players in the side.

"If you look at the coach's jobs around the world they are of differing natures for the different teams.

"In Australia, when Bobby Simpson came in as coach he had a high-profile with Allan Border as a new captain. But, under the changing nature of the Australian side now coach John Buchanan works largely behind the scenes while captain Steve Waugh is a strong leader.

"In South Africa it is similar. People would hardly know that Graham Ford is the coach. Hansie Cronje and Shaun Pollock have both been strong leaders within their units," Reid said.

When the new administration of NZC appointed Steve Rixon as coach, he came in when the New Zealand side was immature and he soon had an inexperienced captain in Stephen Fleming, who was the youngest Test captain in New Zealand's history.

"Steve Rixon and manager John Graham had a very vital role in providing strong leadership for that side. They had an uncompromising approach and they introduced a very strong work ethic. The England tour of 1999 at the end of their time highlighted the work they had done.

"When Jeff Crowe and David Trist took over, Trist was very much stronger in terms of understanding the coaching processes because of his 14-15 years as an international coach," Reid said.

Because of the quickly developing nature of the New Zealand side, Trist faced a changing role with the team.

"As Fleming and the senior players have matured, David, with our encouragement, has pulled back to become more of a facilitator than the strong leader he was when he started," Reid said.

The new coach would continue the latter role of Trist's term while also having a tactical and strategic role with the side.

"The captain still needs someone to bounce things off but he still has to be able to perform the decision-making on the park.

"And he can't be a leader on the park if he is not a leader off the park.

"We now have four or five players in the side who have played a lot of cricket, both in Tests and One-Day Internationals, and they should be able to work with the captain on the field," Reid said.

He felt there would be strong emphasis in three main areas in the coaching choice.

The first was the ability to work on individual development programmes with players over 12 month periods.

"That means working with players on what they each need to do to be better players, whether technically, mentally or in a personal sense. That means tackling the other things in their lives, their personal relationships, their life after cricket. A holistic approach to their development," Reid said.

The second was the ability to assure players remained motivated and interested while on the road. This rested on the coach's ability to plan innovative practice sessions, working on a variety of drills aimed at allowing the players to develop their skills. All of which would be involved in enhancing the technical development of players.

The third was understanding the roles of instilling self-belief and confidence in players and how to assist individual players engender that into their game.

"The point is, that if you don't walk out onto the ground believing you can do it, then you won't.

"At the same time the coach needs to be quite flexible so that when he needs to be hard on someone he can be. That's the same in any business," Reid said.

Ultimately, the coach needed to have quite wide coaching experience, to be sound tactically but more of a sounding board than a leader, to have good technical ability, to have proven and practical procedures to get the best out of players and to have a flexibility of approaches in dealing with individuals, Reid said.

While NZC would naturally like to appoint a New Zealander, the position was clearly an international one and they were looking for the best person for the job, wherever they were from, he said.

Applications close with New Zealand Cricket on May 20.

© CricInfo