'Great for coaching': Aussie assistant breaking the mould

Sometimes Andre Borovec's most valuable coaching tool is admitting what he doesn't know.

Of the handful of coaching assistants accompanying the Australian men's team on their limited-overs tours of the Caribbean and Bangladesh, Borovec's presence among them will have had even the most in-tune cricket observers asking: 'Who?'

The mentors of the country's leading players tend to be drawn from a limited pool of ex-first-class players.

After all, how could someone who has not dealt with the pressures of professional sport be able to advise others on how to handle them?

It is a question Borovec, a stalwart former first-grade wicketkeeper from Geelong who Aaron Finch rates among the hardest trainers he has ever seen, gets asked regularly. 

"As coaches we've got to be OK with saying, 'I don't know'," the 43-year-old tells cricket.com.au in Dhaka. "That can be just as powerful.

"If you're prepared as a coach to show people that you care and you're willing to listen and want to understand how the player learns – that's an important trait to have whether you've played the game or not."

Andrew McDonald was just beginning his own post-playing career in 2015 when Borovec provided him with coaching inspiration where he was least expecting it.

A four-Test former allrounder, McDonald had already completed a full season as a head coach of English county side Leicestershire when he returned to Australia for his final playing stint with Sydney Thunder.

Having moved with his family an hour's drive away from Melbourne, he joined Geelong where Borovec had graduated to the head coach role following a two-decade playing career.

"I basically couldn't be buggered travelling up the highway to Melbourne," McDonald, now a senior assistant coach with Australia, recalls dryly, "and Andre Borovec just happened to be the coach there.

"I played under him for six or seven games, and I didn't really know him at that stage, but there was just something about him where I went, 'Oh, he's good'.

"This environment he had created – this was the way I had wanted to be coached for a long period of time. It made me think about how I could become a better coach."

By 2017, Borovec was working under McDonald as an assistant coach after the latter had returned to take up the head roles at Victoria and the Melbourne Renegades.

Born to a Croatian father and a family who were supportive but otherwise oblivious to the peculiar ways of cricket, Borovec largely had to learn the game off the television and by experimenting in the backyard with his mates.

In many ways, this has informed his passion for teaching – his first profession before he worked full-time in cricket – as well as for coaching.

"As coaches at this level nowadays it's about exploring what a player's options are," he says.

"No doubt if you've played the game before you will have some experiential knowledge, but equally with the technology out there and the amount of games on TV, there's still the option of being able to provide options for players even if you haven't been out in the middle."

At Geelong, Borovec provided players with opposition analysis by scouring MyCricket stats and even manually poring over paper scorebooks.

Even with the more advanced resources he has at his disposal now with the Renegades and the Vics, Borovec puts his own spin on things.

Rather than bombarding players with written summaries and graphs on rival players, he sends out edited videos showing an opposition player's weaknesses overlayed with upbeat drum-and-bass music that players can watch on their phones.

For example, if an upcoming opponent is deemed to have a particular weakness facing slower balls, Borovec will cut together specific footage showing that player struggling to score off slower balls.

"Even though I do enjoy that side of the game, it's really important how you use it," he says of opposition analytics. "You have to have really strong reasons to use them if you go down that path.

"Every game has its own variables – that's the risk of using analytics. If you use them in a generic way, you open yourself up to danger."

The danger, he says, is taking away players' creativity and instinct.

Finch, who first played with Borovec at Geelong when he made his first-grade debut as a 16-year-old travelling across from nearby Colac, is a case in point.

Borovec oversaw the Renegades' opposition analysis during their title year in BBL|08 and admits their regular game plan had to go out the window during their remarkable final victory over rivals Melbourne Stars.

When the Stars were showing the first signs of a batting collapse in pursuit of a modest target, Renegades skipper Finch brought back strike quick Chris Tremain to bowl the 14th over.

A less flexible skipper would have stuck to the plan of bowling spin through that period, but Tremain immediately dismissed dangerman Glenn Maxwell and the Stars folded in spectacular fashion.

"Aaron Finch is probably one of the best gut-feel captains in the world," Borovec says. "We had to allow him that freedom to pull moves out in the middle even if they weren't based on what we'd been talking about in the days prior.

"The final was a great example of that – when Chris Tremain came on to bowl, it certainly wasn't planned, but it was a great example of the players being able to problem solve and turn around a game that was gone for all money."

In 2018-19, McDonald found Borovec's ability to connect with a wide range of players had made him an invaluable addition to a Victoria program that won four titles in five seasons.

McDonald had a whiteboard set up with the names of all the players in the Victoria squad. The coaching staff – Borovec was the most recent addition to the group alongside McDonald, Mick Lewis and Lachie Stevens – had weekly check-ins to ensure they had a direct point of contact with every player.

"We challenged each other if we felt we had a gap there," McDonald says. "And if we had significant gaps, we needed to challenge what our coaching staff was actually doing.

"The reason why we were able to have success, I believe, in Victoria was firstly because we had a great playing group, but also we had a great coaching group that complemented each other and were able to understand each other and cover and assist the players with options.

"'Bora' is just a great connector with people, whether it's the 15-year-old junior or the 35-year-old senior player who is about to exit the game."

Both Finch and McDonald are adamant a strong playing background is not a prerequisite to being a good coach.

"You earn respect by doing your job well," Finch says. "It doesn't matter what your qualifications are, what level you played yourself."

Adds McDonald: "I'm not saying you can't be a good coach with a strong playing background. There are some great coaches out there who have played a lot of Test matches, who have great cricket intellect.

"But over time we've been a bit a bit narrow with some of the appointments we've made.

"The knowledge that you gain from playing definitely gives you a head start against the rest of the pack, but to me we're starting to move past that.

"There are guys and girls out there who have incredible skillsets and just because they haven't been able to conjure up a certain amount of Test matches or first-class games, they probably haven't entered the conversation.

"I think it's a great story that Andre Borovec is here and he has entered that conversation without a strong (first-class or international) playing background.

"It's a great moment for coaching."

Qantas Tour of Bangladesh 2021

Australia squad: Ashton Agar, Wes Agar, Jason Behrendorff, Alex Carey, Dan Christian, Nathan Ellis, Josh Hazlewood, Moises Henriques, Mitchell Marsh, Ben McDermott, Riley Meredith, Josh Philippe, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Ashton Turner, Andrew Tye, Matthew Wade (c), Adam Zampa. Travelling reserve: Tanveer Sangha.

Bangladesh squad: Mahmudullah (c), Soumya Sarkar, Naim Sheikh, Shakib Al Hasan, Nurul Hasan Sohan, Afif Hossain, Shamim Hossain, Shaif Uddin, Taskin Ahmed, Shoriful Islam, Nasum Ahmed, Shak Mahedi Hasan, Mustafizur Rahman, Mohammad Mithun, Taijul Islam, Musaddek Hossain Saikat, Rubel Hossain

(all matches at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, Dhaka)

First T20: August 3, 6pm (10pm AEST)

Second T20: August 4, 6pm (10pm AEST)

Third T20: August 6, 6pm (10pm AEST)

Fourth T20: August 7, 6pm (10pm AEST)

Fifth T20: August 9, 6pm (10pm AEST)