‘Voice of Caribbean cricket’ was passionate to the end

The ‘voice of Caribbean cricket’ as well as one of the few professional journalists from the paradise island of Barbados, Tony Cozier, brought the colour and spirit West Indian cricket to a world audience. He was as much a legend of the game as any of the West Indian greats.

Even within their cricket world fractured by old inter-island rivalry as well as new and heavy board-player politics, Cozier was a unifying figure. The board rejected him though and even manipulated to have him removed as television commentator because of his trenchant criticism of the WICB.

There was no more authentic guide to cricket in the Caribbean, making Cozier, whose father migrated from Britain, a much-in-demand journalist for publications around the world.

A friend of India and admirer of its cricketers’ skills, Cozier was an even more popular figure outside Bridgetown, Barbados and the West Indies. Before ill health forced him to cut down his touring, Cozier was a member of the IPL broadcasting teams too, and his son Craig helps on the production side.

Cozier’s hospitality at his beach house on the east coast of Barbados was legendary. In the old days when Test matches had rest days, we would all hire a car and drive off to the little cove above which his beach house lay and play cricket on the beach with a wet tennis ball.

Some of the cricketing greats would join us too and the day would be long and stretch into heated discussions on reggae music and soca chutney songs in splendidly tropical evenings.

Cozier took the decline of West Indies cricket to heart, berating the cricket board to the point of cutting all his ties with it.

“Tony won an out-of-court settlement after challenging the board’s assertion that at his age his eyesight was too poor to be a broadcaster. Outrageous behaviour but par for the course for this rank administration”, is how Mike Coward wrote on the Cozier-WICB spat.

And yet, throughout all this, Cozier remained a calm and dispassionate man even as while being passionate about cricket.