Fresh off a Plunket Shield title with Central Stags, South African Heinrich Malan is making a compelling case to be the new Black Caps coach.

Two of New Zealand Cricket's most successful domestic coaches of recent years are set to fight out the race to be Mike Hesson's successor.

Canterbury's Gary Stead and Central Stags' Heinrich Malan are the last men standing for the Black Caps coaching job, Stuff understands, with final interviews scheduled for this week.

It means Scotland and former New Zealand A and Northern Districts coach Grant Bradburn missed out, along with Auckland's Mark O'Donnell who is off to the Caribbean Premier League to coach the Jamaica Tallawahs.

KAI SCHWOERER/GETTY IMAGES Canterbury coach Gary Stead remains right in the race to succeed Mike Hesson in charge of the Black Caps.

Stead has long appeared the favourite to get the nod but it seems he is being run close by Malan, a South African who took over the Stags in 2013 and impressed a lot of the right people.

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The selection panel who narrowed it down to the final two is a powerful one: NZC chief executive David White, current test gloveman BJ Watling, former Black Cap Luke Ronchi, Wellington coach and former national selector and test opener Bruce Edgar, NZC board member Don Mackinnon and general manager high performance, Bryan Stronach. White previously expressed his preference for a coach familiar with the New Zealand domestic game.

Stead and Malan are both understood to have applied for the New South Wales job that went to Phil Jaques earlier this year, a signal of their ambition for higher honours before Hesson's shock announcement he would step aside with a year to run on his contract for family reasons.

A former White Ferns coach who took them to the 2009 World Cup final and spent time in the Black Caps set-up last summer, Stead guided Canterbury to Plunket Shield titles in 2014, 2015 and 2017 while Malan's Stags made the Twenty20 and 50-over finals in the past year before hoisting the Plunket Shield themselves in April.

Along with Stead, Malan's name was liberally mentioned as a contender when Hesson resigned.

Recognised as an excellent technical coach, Malan is seen as a methodical planner in the Hesson mould who successfully evolved his methods in his five years in New Zealand.

He could point to regular development of Stags players into the international arena, with spinner Ajaz Patel his latest Black Caps squad callup for the new coach's first assignment against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates in October.

The question around Malan is whether it is too soon for him, after NZC were forced into a selection process a year earlier than they expected to be.

Stead, a five-test Black Caps batsman, could point to his success with Canterbury and familiarity with the NZC system, but will need to convince the panel around his man management and leadership style which is said to be more heavily structured and "black and white" than Hesson's.

Edgar and former bowling coach Shane Bond both would have been strong contenders but didn't apply due to the huge time commitment required under the job's current structure.