New Zealand Cricket, formerly the New Zealand Cricket Council, is the governing body for professional cricket in New Zealand. Cricket is the most popular and highest profile summer sport in New Zealand. New Zealand Cricket operates the New Zealand cricket team, organising Test tours and One-Day Internationals with other nations. It also organises domestic cricket in New Zealand, including the Plunket Shield first-class competition, The Ford Trophy men's domestic one-day competition, the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield women's domestic one-day competition, as well as the Men's Super Smash and Women's Super Smash domestic Twenty20 competitions. David White is the Chief Executive Officer of New Zealand Cricket. Kane Williamson is the current Black Caps captain in all forms of the game, succeeding Brendon McCullum who retired in 2016. History On 27 December 1894, 12 delegates from around New Zealand met in Christchurch to form the New Zealand Cricket Council. Heathcote Williams was elected the inaugural president, and Charles Smith the secretary. The council's aims were to promote and co-ordinate cricket in New Zealand and to organize international tours from and to New Zealand. Cricket development New Zealand Cricket has established High Performance Cricket training centre based at Lincoln University. It also operates a grassroots development programme for school children called 'MILO Kiwi Cricket'. John Wright, former NZ opening batsman, was appointed acting high performance manager for NZC in November 2007 before taking up the head coach position in December 2010. Former Australian Coach John Buchanan was appointed as NZC Director of Cricket in May 2011 as the architect of our new high performance programme. He will perform a number of key duties including the establishment of clear and consistent national coaching philosophies, implement a talent identification programme and oversee the Selection Panel. New Zealand has many private cricket academies. The Bracewell Cricket Academy based at Rathkeale College is one of the largest cricket academies, providing an Overseas Cricket Development Programme, a Pre-Season Coaching Camp and a Festival of Cricket. There are over 100,000 registered cricketers in New Zealand. By way of comparison, Australia and the UK have around 500,000 each. According to Mark O'Neill, New Zealand's batting coach from 2007 to 2009, the competition at club level in NZ is nowhere near as intense as in Australia. "In Sydney there are 20 first grade teams, each club has five grades. To get to first grade you've got to be a friggin' good player