SPOILER ALERT: It's not a coach, a mentor, a guru or someone who played first-class cricket.
Scanning through social media, listening to podcasts, watching videos. These are all great things to do for coaches and players. I've don it for years. The only thing I have really learned during this time is that no one knows it all.
A lot of people claim to know it all. Perhaps not directly, but certainly in their confident claims about themselves and criticisms of others. The subtext is not "here are some ideas I have tried and seem to work" and more like "I have discovered the secrets, everyone else is wrong".
I get why this happens. You have to market yourself. You have to stand out. You have to pander to your own ego (and everyone has one unless they are a clinical psychopath). Social media especially favours this approach.
Even those coaches who talk about evidence-based approaches and avoid self-congratulation don't say this enough:
Nobody knows anything for sure.
Nothing is 100% effective.
We all have our pet ideas. We all have drills and games we like and think work: Then someone comes along who it doesn't work for. You have to be very self-aware to remind yourself that it's not the player at fault, it's more likely drill or method isn't right for that person.
I make that mistake all the time!
I'm constantly reminding myself that each individual player is the only person who can work out what is effective for them. And they are as flawed as we all are in our thinking too. So, we work together to work out what works. We make a lot of mistakes. We feel frustrations when we lose opportunities but we just keep going.
Together.
Coaching is a science to some extent, but it's also an art. That means it's open to interpretation and everyone has a right to an opinion whether we like it or not. When you know that, you realise no coach has the answers (despite what they might imply). It's just not very easy to market on Instagram.
And you know what?
That's OK.