Cricket down right here is the poorer for his passing, however for listeners to the celestial model of Check Match Particular – tuning in to the large match between the Pearly Gates and the Herald Angels – the information is moderately higher. Arlott, Johnston, CMJ, and now Tony Cozier. What a staff.
My first cricket tour to the West Indies was in 1990, when sensible previous arms within the press field moderately spoiled my anticipation of swaying palm timber, coconut daiquiris and Caribbean sunsets with grave warnings of probably harmful features to the journey. Specifically don’t wander round in downtown Kingston or Port of Spain after darkish, take a snorkel and flippers with you to Guyana, and, for visiting hacks invited to his East-coast Barbados beachhouse, beware the Cozier beer and rum occasion.
Within the case of the latter, I used to be in a position to mirror on the sagacity of that recommendation whereas sitting in my Mini Moke in the course of a sugar cane subject on the return journey from the Cozier bash. “Phew Geoff,” I stated to my colleague from The Occasions. “That was a good previous bend.”
“Geoff? Geoff?” At which level a plaintiff cry from the darkness advised me that Geoff was in no place to debate the cornering qualities of the Moke, having parted firm from the open-sided rent car simply earlier than the unintentional detour.
The Cozier seaside occasion was the spotlight of the Barbados Check week, though discovering the venue was virtually as tough as coming back from it. You would odor the barbecued flying fish, and listen to the chinking of glasses and guffaws of laughter, nevertheless it was virtually not possible to seek out Chateau Cozier with out – and I made this suggestion to him a number of occasions – being guided by a field of flares.
As soon as you bought there, although, TC, as he was universally recognized, was a terrific host, though first-timers weren’t to know that when he handed them a rum punch it was marginally extra deadly than a Michael Holding bouncer.
After half a dozen of those, I puzzled whether or not TC would introduce me to his equivalent twin, till I realised that it was merely a grog-induced case of seeing two of him.
When TC let his hair down, he did so (moderately like returning Mini Moke visitors) with out hitting the brakes. Not shocking, actually, on condition that all the things he did was 100 per cent full on, and no journalist I’ve ever met was extra devoted to his craft than he was. Or as completely unflappable.
I keep in mind, when England had collapsed to 46 for eight within the last session of the penultimate day of the Trinidad Check in 1994, the visiting hacks ending up slumped over their desks – emotionally drained on the activity of making an attempt to maintain up with the carnage over three completely different editions. And that was only for the one newspaper.
Cozier, meantime, was not solely doing a column for my newspaper on the time, The Unbiased, but in addition a number of publications across the Caribbean, in addition to radio commentary. And he did all of it as if he was sitting in a seaside bar writing a postcard. By no means as soon as, may anybody recall him trying flustered.
Not even when – and this was lengthy earlier than the times of web, laptops, and cell phones – he was trying to ship an article from Australia by way of cable, a technique of communication which, to the fashionable era, will not be too far superior from strapping a message to a pigeon, or placing a word in a bottle and dropping it over the aspect of a pedalo.
On this event, the article was destined for The Guyana Chronicle, however when a cabled message got here again reporting that it hadn’t arrived TC checked and found that it had gone to Ghana as an alternative. He despatched it once more, and this time it arrived in Guinea. A 3rd try resulted in it going to the Cayman Islands, at which level only a few hacks would have averted a nuclear meltdown. I don’t know, as a result of I wasn’t there, however my guess is that TC would at most have managed a resigned shrug.
Certainly one of Cozier’s many appreciable items was to grow to be the pre-eminent, extremely revered chronicler of West Indies cricket in an period when collective id was at finest fragile. Island loyalties have been such (and by and enormous nonetheless are) that when Cozier as soon as wrote a crucial article about Trinidad’s Phil Simmons, a banner on the Queen’s Park Oval was unfurled to learn: “Cozier Is A Canine”.
He first reported on cricket on the age of 15, and his first tour of England was in 1963 – on such a good price range that he stayed in YMCA’s and on pals’ sofas. Radio, nevertheless, was to grow to be TC’s actual forte, and listeners weren’t solely knowledgeable however soothed by his melodic Bajan twang. A lot so, that those that didn’t know what he appeared like wrongly assumed that he was black.
His loss of life, on the age of 75, is gloomy for any variety of causes, however not least for shifting us nearer to the day the place cricket will solely be written about, or broadcast, by former gamers. A few of whom are outstandingly good, however lots of whom – apparently chosen purely on the premise that they have been as soon as batsman for Pakistan, or bowled fairly nicely for Australia – are excruciatingly terrible.
Some base their commentary round Basil Fawlty’s description of his spouse’s particular topic on Mastermind – “the bleedin’ apparent” – and others seem to have acquired the vocabulary invented by Stanley Unwin, an old-time British comic who made a profession out of speaking gobbledygook. And a few may even handle a mix of the 2.
TC was one of many final of the breed of correct journalists on the forefront of tv and radio cricket commentary – Harsha Bhogle in India is about the one one left now – and whereas Cozier was a person who sometimes replayed his commentaries at night time to pay attention out for faults as a way to enhance, there’s a brand new breed round who similar to to listen to the sound of their very own voice.
TMS ought to tread rigorously with its laddish, former participant ho-ho-ho surroundings. Particularly when its primary asset, Aggers, calls it a day. One of many programme’s quirks is nipping off for the Delivery Forecast, however the fear now’s that there might come a time when the listener’s irritation at having Broad and Anderson interrupted by Dogger and Fisher would possibly find yourself the opposite method spherical.
This piece initially featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday Could 20 2016
