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 massive match between the Pearly Gates and the Herald Angels – the information is quite higher. Arlott, Johnston, CMJ, and now Tony Cozier. What a workforce.
My first cricket tour to the West Indies was in 1990, when sensible previous fingers within the press field quite spoiled my anticipation of swaying palm bushes, coconut daiquiris and Caribbean sunsets with grave warnings of doubtless harmful features to the journey. Particularly 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 area 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 informed me that Geoff was in no place to debate the cornering qualities of the Moke, having parted firm from the open-sided rent automobile simply earlier than the unintentional detour.
The Cozier seashore occasion was the spotlight of the Barbados Check week, though discovering the venue was virtually as tough as coming back from it. You would scent the barbecued flying fish, and listen to the chinking of glasses and guffaws of laughter, but it surely was virtually inconceivable to search out Chateau Cozier with out – and I made this suggestion to him a number of instances – 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 questioned whether or not TC would introduce me to his similar 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 (quite like returning Mini Moke visitors) with out hitting the brakes. Not shocking, actually, on condition that every thing 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 bear 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 process of attempting to maintain up with the carnage over three totally 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 additionally 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 seashore bar writing a postcard. By no means as soon as, might anybody recall him trying flustered.
Not even when – and this was lengthy earlier than the times of web, laptops, and cell phones – he was making an attempt to ship an article from Australia by way of cable, a way of communication which, to the trendy era, just isn’t 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.
One in all Cozier’s many appreciable presents was to develop into the pre-eminent, extremely revered chronicler of West Indies cricket in an period when collective identification was at greatest fragile. Island loyalties had been such (and by and enormous nonetheless are) that when Cozier as soon as wrote a important 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 associates’ sofas. Radio, nonetheless, was to develop into 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 seemed 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 a lot of whom – apparently chosen purely on the idea that they had 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 mixture 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 often replayed his commentaries at evening to pay attention out for faults in an effort 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 fastidiously with its laddish, former participant ho-ho-ho atmosphere. Particularly when its primary asset, Aggers, calls it a day. One of many programme’s quirks is nipping off for the Transport Forecast, however the fear now could be that there could come a time when the listener’s irritation at having Broad and Anderson interrupted by Dogger and Fisher would possibly find yourself the opposite means spherical.
This piece initially featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday Could 20 2016
