Could gruelling schedule have affected Yardy?

If a working man marched off to other continents for six months and came home for three days in all that time he would probably be demonised as an absentee or deadbeat dad. When wealthier people do it we call them England cricketers. Please let's not mention the armed services. Signing up for wars is not the same as being forced on to a pitiless fixtures treadmill to satisfy the needs of sponsors, governing bodies and television.

The crippling effects of depression generally, and depression in sports-people in particular, were widely documented last week and, in fairness to Boycott, he never set himself up as an expert. Nor did anyone expect (or want) Boycott to start weeping, or lighting incense sticks for Yardy. Still, this is a grown man entering his 70s, a pundit for decades – one would have thought he'd understand the basic mechanics of empathy.

Boycott was ignorant. Yet so too were the majority of the commentators ... Depression doesn't come on due to playing too much cricket ... Alastair Campbell explained it best. "How would Boycott have felt if I had suggested to him that his cancer had resulted from poor performance as a sportsman or sports commentator?" Campbell wrote on his blog. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. For depressives, depression just is, the same as for cancer sufferers, cancer just is, and if you catch a cold, you just do."