KEY POINTS:
One's seen as innovative, the other a tinkerer. One sneer-ingly dismisses the media, the other is described, almost affectionately, as acerbic. One comes from a position of enviable strength, the other reeks of desperation.
They're poles apart, Graham Henry and John Bracewell, yet so close.
The major difference
is that Henry stands up to scrutiny because his team, the All Blacks win nearly every game they play. Bracewell suffers under scrutiny because his team, the Black Caps, win about half the time.
By sporting definition that makes one a very good coach and the other an average one, but it is never as simple as that.
For a start, there is a debate about just how important a coach is: can a great team win with a bad coach and vice versa? How much responsibility hangs at the door of a coach of an underperforming team?
David Trist was in a similar position to Bracewell, coach of a Black Caps team who suffer chronically from injuries and a subsequent lack of depth.
His philosophy was simple.
"When things are going badly it's easier to give the coach the entire blame and when things are going well let the players take all the accolades. Essentially the coach's job, especially in New Zealand, is one where you have to draw your own satisfaction because you can't believe you'll get it from the public. That's just the order of things."
Bracewell has been getting little "satisfaction" from any source lately.
Last week he appeared to crack. Under constant scrutiny for his 'rotation' policy and facing allegations of unrest within the squad he resorted to grunts and three-word answers at a press conference.
It sent a message, loud and clear, but not the message Bracewell wanted to deliver: if this is how the coach handles pressure then is it any wonder the Black Caps fold like a class of origami students when the heat goes on.
But it should be remembered that Henry can be as equally dismissive of questions he doesn't like.
Don't forget, it was not too long ago that Henry's rotation policy had purists choking on their chops at the thought of David Hill and Sosene Anesi becoming All Blacks by virtue of Henry's bloated squads.
Even given the fact that cricket is nowhere near the attrition exercise rugby is, Bracewell has done far less chopping and changing. Yet, while people have bought into Henry's philosophy (without necessarily embracing it), Bracewell's tinkering is castigated as being counter-productive.
In the Herald on Sunday column 'You ask the Questions' that features today (p44), Bracewell passionately defends his policy. If you swap the names it could so easily have come out of Henry's mouth.
Reader: With the benefit of hindsight, has your player rotation policy paid off?
Bracewell: "Rotation is a term that has been used by the media. Over the last two years we have attempted to put in place planning and contingencies to ensure our best team for the World Cup. This means keeping a number of our injury-prone players on a periodised programme building to the World Cup. This appears to look like rotation but we prefer to look at it as building depth. I am delighted that out of it we have seen the likes of Jeetan Patel, Kyle Mills, Ross Taylor and Mark Gillespie blossom on the world stage."
On this point, it comes down to pure timing.
Henry made his vision and plan clear three years out from the World Cup. Although Bracewell says he has been working this policy for two years, it really only started to be articulated clearly three months ago.
Both have stuck with their policies with a zeal bordering on the bloody-minded, something of which Vince Lombardi - the former Green Bay Packers mentor and arguably the greatest American football coach ever - would have approved.
"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will," Lombardi espoused.
The 'god complex' was a term devised to portray those who act with an arrogance that suggests they have god-like powers. The inexorable rise of professional sport has given rise to the 'coach complex', something we're seeing more in New Zealand sport since rugby went professional in the early 90s.
It is only slightly different from the 'God complex'. Rather than self-appointment, the 'coach complex' is as much propagated by a sporting public who are fixated by the thought that a coach is either the cure-all, or the root of all problems.
However, the idea the coach is the only problem in the Black Caps is like saying Graham Henry is the only reason the All Blacks have assembled one of the most formidable sides to grace a rugby field.
It's a cliche, but the coach can't hit the winning runs, kick the conversions, take the catches. It's questionable, too, as to how much they actually 'coach'. It is a vaguely ridiculous notion that Bracewell would try to adjust Fleming's grip on the bat or Henry would try to change Dan Carter's drop-kick technique.
Coaching these days seems to be more about creating the right environment in which the players can perform to their optimum.
Henry, with his large team of specialist coaches and auxiliary staff, has found the recipe. Bracewell, on the other hand, appears to be struggling in this regard.
Perhaps it is not surprising. Trist, for one, has seen a seismic shift in the Black Caps 'dynamic', which must have taken some time to get used to.
"Personally I thought Stephen Fleming was entering the halcyon years of captaincy after 2001," he said. "He had a great persona and understood the international game. He was a natural leader.
"It was clear New Zealand Cricket didn't want that. They moved Stephen, in part, away from increased responsibility and re-established it, certainly with the appointment of John Bracewell, firmly in the hands of the coach.
"That's the decision they've taken. Whether it's right or wrong will be judged by posterity."
As will Bracewell and Henry. Unfortunately posterity for them reads "World Cup", more and more the only real currency in the respective sports.
That's why, if the oddsmakers are made to look fools and the All Blacks stumble in France and the Black Caps excel in the Caribbean, it might be Henry that is suddenly looking the fool and Bracewell the guru.
Who'd be a coach?