In an era of continually eroding standards and the absence of pride and professionalism in so many spheres of life, the late Tony Cozier represented the very best of traditions.
His career of over half a century in journalism and particularly in cricket reporting, where he mastered all forms from descriptive ball-by-ball commentary to the spare inputs in TV broadcasts to the incisive match reports for newspapers replete with pertinent facts, is unlikely to be matched. Cozier was the consummate professional and always seeking to perfect his craft. In turn, the people of the West Indies recognised him as one of the few authoritative voices on everything cricket. This acceptance allowed his piercing insights to inform his audiences in a magisterial manner and at the same time reflect the mores and attributes of the wider society.
Long before television broadcasts became a staple and cricket began being played all year-round, it was the ball-by-ball radio commentaries from typically biennial Test series here in the Caribbean or from distant lands, oftentimes infernally poorly transmitted, that cricket lovers would hang on every last word to be transformed into virtual spectators. This was where Cozier excelled. He could describe eloquently and elegantly the weather, the mood of the crowd, the mannerisms of the players, the state of the ground, the finer points of team selections. You were transported.
Then you were treated to the mastery of the field of play. He was as much a captain of commentating as the man who was leading the team on the field. He could pick apart field placings and discern incidents that transformed a poor bowling spell into an innings wrecker or a patchy innings into a match winning one. Whether it be the intricacies of the doosra, a further improvised reverse sweep or an agricultural shot, Cozier was equal to the task and just at home in the commentary box banter about excursions during Test rest days (remember those?) or which of his fellow commentators had gobbled up the tea pastries.
When he was done with commentating for the day, he had to hurriedly meet match report deadlines for regional newspapers. This required his honing of the technique to type up the pre-lunch and pre-tea passages of play during the periods he was not commentating and then just appending the description of the final session after the last ball had been bowled. This would then have to be faxed – as opposed to emailing – for the news room to begin setting it down. It was a far more demanding discipline than it is today and he met the standard unfailingly and his work must be held up for all regional journalists as exemplary.
He was just as exacting in his role as an analyst of the state of West Indian cricket and by extension the societies that comprised this great endeavour. Having been at his prime during the halcyon days of West Indian cricket it pained him no end that the team had slid over the last two decades into mediocrity and indiscipline chaperoned by the long running, never ending administrative train wreck that was and is the West Indies Cricket Board. Countless of his contributions dissected the failings of the various pillars of West Indian cricket and in each of these pieces the desire to right the ship and the pain of the descent was palpable.
Writing on the 2013 regional T20 tournament he was at his scathing best as follows.
“Had he watched the early matches in the regional Twenty20 from his luxury villa on Barbados’ west coast this past week, Verus International’s head honcho Ajmal Khan might have wondered just what he got himself into, splurging millions of his merchant bank’s money for the licence to replace the West Indies Cricket Board’s tournament with his own.
“Even for the game’s most abbreviated version, the cricket transmitted globally on ESPN has been, not to put too fine a point on it, appalling. The first regional tournament since the West Indies’ joyous triumph in the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka last year stirred understandably high expectations. ESPN promoted it as the ‘most competitive and celebrated’; it has fallen well short.”
In one of his last analyses, weeks before he died, Cozier previewed the T20 World Cup final between the West Indies and England with his usual suppleness and texture as is evident here.
“It all ‘means a lot to Caribbean people’ whose previous passion for the game has faded as their once invincible team has plunged to lower rungs of the ICC rankings in the longer versions.
“Incentive is a strong positive aspect in any sport; it alone does not guarantee success. The team that plays the best cricket on the day will be the World T20 champions by tonight.
“As dangerous as the men’s raft of gung-ho ball beaters are, most with the telling experience of the Indian environment through their seasons in the IPL, their key men today are just as likely to be Samuel Badree, the 35-year-old unimposing Trinidadian whose wicket-to-wicket control of fizzing, phantom leg-spin has influenced the ICC to name him the new No.1 bowler in the format, and his contrasting Bajan partner Sulieman Benn, the fiercely competitive 6 feet, 7 inch beanpole left-arm spinner.
“Their task is curbing England’s own belligerent attackers, the young brigade of Jason Roy, Alex Hales, the classy Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler, and building pressure with dot balls.”
It is a crying shame that Cozier was one of those who suffered indignities from the WICB when he was unceremoniously pulled from its commentary panel after decades of yeoman’s service and prompting him to uncharacteristically launch a court case against the Cameron administration.
The most fitting way in which the author of the seminal The West Indies: 50 Years of Test Cricket should be remembered is for his body of work to form the basis of inspiring other journalists and cricket aficionados.
During a 2013 interview with a reporter at the High Five, West Indies Cricket Heritage Centre in Grenada, Cozier spoke with understated but evident pride at finding among its collection the magazine on the 1948 England tour to the West Indies which had been co- edited by his father Jimmy Cozier. He then pointed out that his son Craig was similarly engaged and that this undoubted labour of love had passed down from one generation to another, to another and could go on, except as he put it, one could never know with the state of West Indian cricket. In that same interview he let out that he had his own substantial collection of cricket memorabilia but that it was in an “absolute mess”. He joked that the curator from the Grenadian museum could fly to Barbados and give him a hand. One hopes that as a lasting legacy of his contributions in so many areas of cricket that his collection will gain a treasured repose for all West Indians to gain their own insights into the measure of this great voice and stakeholder of cricket.
