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Tony Cozier dead at 75: Vale the Bajan Beat

Roar Guru
12th May, 2016
2

I was one of the kids who grew up in the glory of West Indies cricket in the 80s – starting as an enraptured five year old witnessing the ferocity of the 84-85 team.

The Terry-Towelled Clive Lloyd, Viv the Master Blaster, and Larry Gomes were un-helmeted deities of class. The endless assembly line of pacers headed by the late Malcolm Marshall made misery in every Aussie town with the exception of the SCG.

In calling Marshall the best, he had some friends. In that time, the voice of Tony Cozier was the Calypso beat to the Wide World of Sports commentary team.

The mark of his great commentary was, like Richie Benuad, the art of keeping things simple.

His rich voice and uncomplicated presentation provided viewers and listeners with the appropriate analysis or progress of the game.

Subtly, and particularly during home matches in the Carribean, underneath these descriptions were wonderful anecdotes and overlays of the history of these amazing collection of islands.

He is quoted as stating his greatest commentary influence was Australia’s immortal Alan McGilvary, and following his passing Jonathan Agnew has stated there has not been a finer commentator who mastered both television and radio commentary.

I feel that a profile of Cozier completed by Georgia Popplewell for the Caribbean Beat magazine in 2003 captures the essence of the man.

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“Cozier, you see, had spoken. Until he opened his mouth, he had simply been another middle-aged customer sent over by the Heathrow airport desk. But then he asked whether we could possibly exchange our Hyundai Sonata for a Volkswagen Passat, and Cozier metamorphosed before the elderly gentleman’s eyes into an icon. Here, demanding an audacious upgrade (though let me say, for the record, that our argument was trunk space), was the voice of West Indies cricket.”

Towards the end of his career, it was still amazing to listen to his passionate and accurate commentary on the plight of the Windies game, while watching the Windies enforced to follow-on in South Africa, or fall apart to the guile of spin in India on the Foxtel ‘graveyard’ shifts showing international cricket.

His bemoaning of the state of the game’s administration in the islands materialised into the recent litany of contract disputes, tour withdrawals and sponsorship wrangles.

Like Benuad, his voice became synonymous with the game, and followed me through childhood right through those late nights of study at university, and more recently watching the Windies when the young ones couldn’t sleep.

We all remember fondly that Richie owned a mortgage on the number two. I would suggest Tony Cozier’s Bajan eloquence holds similar authority on any number in the teens.

“Vivian Richards, bowled by Lawson for sixteeeeeeeen”.

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