The great Tony Cozier and the hypocrisy that goes with cricket
He was certainly the finest all-round cricket journalist that the world has seen.
Tony Cozier had no equal.
For anyone to lyrically thrill the cricket world in electronic and printed form in the manner that Cozier has done, amounts to sheer genius of the highest order.
The death of the Barbadian-born cricket scribe last week has robbed cricket of its greatest talent in that department of the game. Cozier’s achievement in cricket journalism and broadcasting can be measured favourably, based on impact, with the achievements on the pitch by those greats who played the game for the West Indies, among them Sir Garfield Sobers, rated as the greatest all-rounder that the game has seen; Sir Vivian Richards, the greatest West Indian batsman in my estimation; Brian Lara, Sir Curtly Ambrose, Sir Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Sir Everton Weekes, and Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
It is only sad that at the height of his journalism career his progress was stumped by the action of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) — the same hypocritical board that is now praising the great man. By refusing to allow Cozier to do television cricket commentary on international matches in the Caribbean, something that he had done with the utmost professionalism for decades, the WICB virtually fuelled a much earlier demise for one who had served the region in his field with absolute distinction.
His snub by the WICB can also be equated to how some of the regional team’s most dedicated players, the latest being Chanderpaul, were tossed onto the scrap heap by the WICB, long before they were finished, after having served West Indies cricket with distinction.
As if to add insult to injury, in his latest fight with the WICB, Cozier was forced to take that organisation’s president to court for another of the ill-timed statements that usually emerge from the mouth of Wycliffe Cameron. By saying that Cozier was no longer seeing the cricket, meaning that his sight had deteriorated badly (which was certainly not true), Cameron plunged a verbal dagger into the body of one so respected, one who would not have been like an ageing boxer who did not know when to quit the ring. Put another way, if Cozier knew that he was not seeing the game clearly he would have left gracefully.
And, like other ill-timed statements from Cameron which lacked basis and foundation and have gone to the brink of throwing West Indies cricket into turmoil, no medical investigation was done into the quality of Cozier’s vision to determine how well he could see. Instead, Cozier was objected to all because he was critical of the WICB and how people like Cameron were running the sport.
How ridiculous was the reason given for Cozier not doing television commentary in the region anymore when the same WICB president was quoted as saying, when the matter came up: “He still does radio.” Now, how do you say that a man can’t see well enough to do television commentary, yet he still was able to do radio, when in fact doing radio requires better eyesight?
Television commentators usually have a monitor in the commentators’ box beside them which they can rely on to do their work. If they wish, they do not need to even look at the action on the field. When you do radio commentary, you have to call the action from well over 100 metres away. Now, you tell me, which one requires better eyesight?
Then again, it demonstrates Cameron’s ignorance of what goes into cricket commentary and his general vindictiveness towards Cozier. I wonder if he will have the stomach to attend Cozier’s funeral? Guess not!
Now, all that has served to blemish the career of the Caribbean’s finest, and even the rest of the world has taken note of the treatment.
Respected British commentator and former England international Jonathan Agnew is one of those disgusted by the WICB’s treatment of Cozier.
“The way he was treated … it’s so desperately sad. I hope they feel bad about that,” Agnew remarked in a radio interview last week.
Last Tuesday, May 10, Michael Holding, who was guided by Cozier in his early years as a cricket commentator, alerted me to the possibility of imminent bad news in respect of Cozier. Less than 12 hours later, he was no more.
Although death is inevitable, whenever it occurs it digs a deeper hole than can be imagined, in the skin of anyone close to the deceased.
I met Cozier in May 1985 during the fourth Test match between the West Indies and New Zealand at Sabina Park. As a young member of the sports desk of the Gleaner newspaper, meeting the man face-to-face was exceedingly intimidating. Here was someone whom I had grown to hear on radio with Joseph ‘Reds’ Perreira, Roy Lawrence and John Arlott, and seeing him in person made me perspire on the coldest day.
By the following year, with Jamaica and West Indies pacer Balfour Patrick Patterson at his fastest, Cozier was also at his best, describing the lightning pace that the speed merchant dished out against the hapless England team – a strong aggregation that included batting greats David Gower, Allan Lamb, Ian Botham and Graham Gooch – that made England crawl and saw the West Indies rushing to a 10-wicket win inside three days, also at Sabina Park.
Our relationship grew to great heights over the years, but my respect for Cozier shot up several notches during my first tour of England in 1995. It was long — a whole three-and-a-half months — and having not gone anywhere outside of London on my previous trips to the motherland, it was quite difficult, especially when one had to live on a limited budget. Thanks to Sandals, which sponsored my hotel accommodation, things, though limited, were not impossible to achieve.
Cozier contributed immensely to that baptism of a long tour. He would readily make critical recommendations that I would gobble up without a fuss. Operating with a larger budget, Cozier would often rent cars and offer rides, knowing how critical the financial situation was. One very looooong trip from London to Nottingham in the north, with Cozier at the wheel, was the ideal classroom setting for the passing of knowledge on West Indies cricket. The journey back, despite the distance, was equally enlightening.
Former Trinidad & Tobago and West Indies opening batsman Bryan Allan Davis, who was also making his first tour to England as a cricket writer, also profited from Cozier’s bank of knowledge.
When Tony told you “nice article” or “well written” you knew you did something special, even outstanding. The only other worthy commendations for a young cricket writer at the time were to be told by one of the finest scribes of his generation, though unorthodox, the late George Beckford, and the statistician par excellence Jimmy Richards, that they both kept scrapbooks of your work.
Cozier’s hosting of touring and local journalists at his beach house in Barbados, usually when there were rest days in Test matches, were legendary. If anyone wanted to see Tony in his element, watching him play windball cricket on the beach was the real thing.
So awesome was Cozier that newspapers across the Caribbean, among them the one that he wrote for most often, the Barbados Nation, as well as the Trinidad Express, the Jamaica Observer, several British publications, as well as those in India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, among others, believed in his ability to the point that they would publish his work with utmost glee.
For his over two decades of publishing the West Indian Cricket Annual, and the many tour souvenir publications that he spearheaded for the WICB when it was being run by people with competence and vision, he ought to be well recognised.
Cozier was witty, and to see him at his best reel anecdote after anecdote virtually off the bat, there need not have been an intervention by the ‘holy spirits’, although he often boasted that the Barbados-brewed Banks Beer was as good at exciting the taste buds as Jamaica’s own Red Stripe. He also knew how to label a ‘perfect’ wine.
Cozier would brag about facing or running out with some of the greats of Barbados cricket while he represented Wanderers and Carlton in that country’s local divisions, including Sobers; the legendary Wes Hall, now a minister of religion, and Hall’s fellow fast bowlers Charlie Griffith, the late Keith Boyce and Sylvester Clarke. His success, he would admit, was limited, what with such fine talent scorching the turfs of the tiny island like an out of control bush fire.
Although he was a member of Pickwick Club, seen as the elite of Barbados cricket, with headquarters at Kensington Oval, Cozier never behaved as if he was better than anyone else, even if his pigmentation was not the shade that represented the majority of Barbados’s people. He would have had to undergo delicate situations, at times when racism in Barbados, though subtle in certain geographic divisions, was very much evident.
And though he was straightforward in his pronouncements, he was always fair and balanced with those utterances that would often defuse rising tension.
So the fingers and mind that put together the last column that was published two weeks ago, among several thousands over the years, and the soothing voice that gave those who listened the kind of elixir that they needed, even though their team was not on top, are no more.
But Winston Anthony Lloyd Cozier played a gem of an innings, one that will, like some of the scintillating batting and bowling performances of several generations, never be forgotten.
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