Andrew Strauss, the newly appointed director of England cricket, knows the clock is ticking in his search to fill the vacant position of head coach but insists only those candidates aligned with his stance towards Kevin Pietersen, with the batsman ruled out of this summer’s plans, will be considered.

When asked on Tuesday at Lord’s whether English cricket’s relationship with the 34-year-old could ever be rebuilt, Strauss replied “absolutely” and claimed both parties “should look at ways and methods of trying to make that happen”. Those words felt optimistic at the time and since then the mud-slinging has continued, with Colin Graves, the new chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, the last to stick his head above the parapet.

While Graves can now reflect on his first day in the job on Friday that was spent defending himself over accusations of deceit from Pietersen, Strauss will step up the process to identify the right person to replace Peter Moores. But be it the front-runner Jason Gillespie, Strauss’s former Middlesex team-mate Justin Langer or AN Other, they must agree on Pietersen.

“Any coach who comes into the England environment will know the situation,” said Strauss. “And he also, if his philosophy is aligned with mine, will understand the importance of trust in a team environment and why we made the call we made [on Pietersen] – because trust doesn’t exist. So I would have thought he’d understand the situation and be willing to work on those terms.”

This assertion came as the former Test captain and the chief executive at the ECB, Tom Harrison, when not repeating the words “trust” and “clarity”, were trying to provide some sort of tangible vision for how the national side will operate. Strauss has, after all, been hired not just to rebolt the door that had creaked open to Pietersen at the start of March following some loose talk from Graves. His true brief is to set a four-year plan in motion that will release England from the constipated cricket that turned their World Cup into a long walk off a short pier and has left the Test side seemingly only ever one defeat from requiring open-heart surgery, despite a results column that suggests it is in slightly ruder health.

The early visit of New Zealand for two Tests and six limited-overs internationals, starting at Lord’s on Thursday, is timely. For it was their rocket-fuelled World Cup campaign under Brendon McCullum, when they finished runners-up to the co-hosts Australia, that perhaps best illustrated how a side can wins hearts and minds of its public by playing instinctive, attacking cricket.

England, low on confidence and with a fanbase divided, could do with a spot of that. But of all the questions he fielded on Tuesday – and bear in mind there was a tidal wave on the thorny subject of Pietersen – the only query he claimed he was uncomfortable in answering was in regards to the style of play his sides will strive for. Aggressive cricket is not a switch that can be flicked, apparently. “Everyone wants people to go out there and take the game to the opposition, whack them for 500 in 30 overs and bowl them out for 10. That would be perfect but that’s not the reality,” he said. “The style of cricket comes with the level of confidence of the players, the ability to get on top of opposition and that is going to take time, it won’t come overnight. I can’t go into the dressing room next week and say ‘lads, you need to score five an over’ – that’s ridiculous.”

Instilling such confidence, for Strauss, comes down to the team’s culture and identity. It is here where he intends to learn from other successful teams, with New Zealand’s most successful sporting export, the All Blacks, his favourite. While he wisely chose not to mention their famous “no dickheads” selection policy, the 38-year-old is taken by the mantra that their international rugby players must “leave the shirt in a better place”.

“The All Blacks have a very strong team identity and that sort of philosophy is absolutely spot on,” said Strauss. “England cricketers have got to be unbelievably proud of pulling on that shirt and there has got to be a whole culture that is associated with it. It’s not just about putting it on and going out and playing cricket, there has got to be something much bigger than that.

“That drives everything and it’s got to be policed and bought into by the players themselves. That’s the only way culture works properly. Part of my job is to look at other sports and work out what we can take from them.

“To be doing everything through the prism of our experiences in cricket is the wrong way of looking at it.”

While the creation of such a sporting culture will take time, Strauss knows he must move fast on the coach, with Michael Clarke’s Australia arriving at the end of next month for their defence of the Ashes. Having been Test captain for six months before England last reclaimed the urn in 2009, he is not in agreement with the pessimists. “There’s been a lot of people saying we don’t have a chance of winning this Ashes series – I don’t believe that for one moment,” he said. “I’m not holding my hands up and saying we will lose this Ashes series to Australia, I think we have got a good chance of winning it.”