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 fairly higher. Arlott, Johnston, CMJ, and now Tony Cozier. What a workforce.
My first cricket tour to the West Indies was in 1990, when clever previous palms within the press field fairly spoiled my anticipation of swaying palm bushes, coconut daiquiris and Caribbean sunsets with grave warnings of doubtless harmful elements 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 celebration.
Within the case of the latter, I used to be capable of mirror on the sagacity of that recommendation whereas sitting in my Mini Moke in the midst of a sugar cane area on the return journey from the Cozier bash. “Phew Geoff,” I mentioned to my colleague from The Occasions. “That was a decent 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 automobile simply earlier than the unintentional detour.
The Cozier seashore celebration was the spotlight of the Barbados Check week, though discovering the venue was nearly as difficult as returning from it. You might scent the barbecued flying fish, and listen to the chinking of glasses and guffaws of laughter, nevertheless it was nearly not possible to search 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 identified, 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 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 (fairly like returning Mini Moke friends) with out hitting the brakes. Not stunning, actually, provided that every little 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 closing session of the penultimate day of the Trinidad Check in 1994, the visiting hacks ending up slumped over their desks – emotionally drained on the job 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 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 seashore bar writing a postcard. By no means as soon as, may anybody recall him wanting flustered.
Not even when – and this was lengthy earlier than the times of web, laptops, and cellphones – he was making an attempt to ship an article from Australia by way of cable, a way of communication which, to the fashionable era, shouldn’t be too far superior from strapping a message to a pigeon, or placing a notice in a bottle and dropping it over the facet 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 a substitute. 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 every of Cozier’s many appreciable presents was to turn into the pre-eminent, extremely revered chronicler of West Indies cricket in an period when collective identification was at finest fragile. Island loyalties have been such (and by and enormous nonetheless are) that when Cozier as soon as wrote a essential 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 decent finances that he stayed in YMCA’s and on associates’ sofas. Radio, nonetheless, was to turn 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 regarded like wrongly assumed that he was black.
His dying, on the age of 75, is unhappy for any variety of causes, however not least for transferring 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 premise that they have been as soon as a superb batsman for Pakistan, or bowled fairly effectively 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 sometimes replayed his commentaries at evening to pay attention out for faults with a purpose 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 setting. 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’s that there might come a time when the listener’s irritation at having Broad and Anderson interrupted by Dogger and Fisher may find yourself the opposite approach spherical.
This piece initially featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday Could 20 2016
