"When I was playing the game we never had the benefit of TV or video to analyse our techniques or look at faults, we depended on other cricketers to watch us and then tell us what they thought we were doing wrong"
About this Quote
Boycott is doing two things at once: delivering a practical point about how sport has changed, and quietly staking a moral claim about what was lost in the upgrade.
On the surface, he is describing a pre-video era when improvement depended on human observation. The phrasing matters. "Benefit" and "faults" frame technology as a corrective lens, a way of turning messy performance into measurable error. But he pivots fast to "we depended" - a word that makes coaching sound less like a service and more like a social contract. In Boycott's world, technique isn’t refined by replay loops and analytics dashboards; it’s negotiated in the dressing room, built on trust, reputation, and blunt peer assessment.
The subtext is vintage Boycott: a defense of craft and a sideways critique of modern certainty. Video promises objectivity, yet Boycott implies it can also outsource judgment. When other cricketers "tell us what they thought", the emphasis lands on thought - fallible, opinionated, personal. That subjectivity isn’t a bug; it’s a culture. It creates accountability between players, encourages apprenticeship, and preserves a kind of professional intimacy that data can't replicate.
Contextually, it’s also a generational flex. Boycott’s authority comes from surviving an era with fewer tools and still mastering the basics. The line isn’t anti-technology so much as pro-memory: a reminder that the game’s knowledge once lived in people, not in screens, and that something about that friction made cricketers harder, and maybe closer.
On the surface, he is describing a pre-video era when improvement depended on human observation. The phrasing matters. "Benefit" and "faults" frame technology as a corrective lens, a way of turning messy performance into measurable error. But he pivots fast to "we depended" - a word that makes coaching sound less like a service and more like a social contract. In Boycott's world, technique isn’t refined by replay loops and analytics dashboards; it’s negotiated in the dressing room, built on trust, reputation, and blunt peer assessment.
The subtext is vintage Boycott: a defense of craft and a sideways critique of modern certainty. Video promises objectivity, yet Boycott implies it can also outsource judgment. When other cricketers "tell us what they thought", the emphasis lands on thought - fallible, opinionated, personal. That subjectivity isn’t a bug; it’s a culture. It creates accountability between players, encourages apprenticeship, and preserves a kind of professional intimacy that data can't replicate.
Contextually, it’s also a generational flex. Boycott’s authority comes from surviving an era with fewer tools and still mastering the basics. The line isn’t anti-technology so much as pro-memory: a reminder that the game’s knowledge once lived in people, not in screens, and that something about that friction made cricketers harder, and maybe closer.
Quote Details
| Topic | Coaching |
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