#365DaysOfWriting — Day Four

RIP Tony Cozier

Day Three ended on a rather sad note. While watching the IPL game between RCB and Mumbai Indians, I learnt that Tony Cozier passed away.

Now while I’m not 100% well-versed with all the work he’s done in the West Indies, I do know one thing for sure — Tony was an all-rounder in the truest sense of the word for West Indies. He was their journalist, historian and commentator all rolled into one — all of this without having played the game. It’s easy to see why there were so many messages of condolence, not just for his family, but for the game as well — cricket had truly lost one of its most distinguished voices. There was no bigger fan of West Indies cricket than him.

Following cricket in the West Indies used to be a pain in India. You either had to stay up till the wee hours of the morning to watch a full game, or you slept early and hoped to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to see the final few overs of a game. Tony Cozier made that bearable. He always had a great anecdote or two about life in the West Indies that covered for dull periods of test matches. You could always hear peals of laughter in the commentary box when he was on air. At least I did.

There’s a story about him I read on my friend’s timeline that showed the kind of impact Tony Cozier’s voice had in the West Indies — courtesy Joy Bhattacharjya, gem of a guy, always comes up with these little trinkets of joy. This is how he puts it:

In November 1996, a group of prisoners actually broke out of a jail in Guyana because the guards had shut off the radio commentary from a test match between the West Indies and Australia. Tony Cozier was a hugely respected commentator worldwide, but in his native Caribbean, he was the voice of the game! Devastating…

Tony Cozier follows other legends of the game to the great beyond. We’re not yet over Tony Greig, Richie Benaud and Martin Crowe, to name a few, and now Cozier joins them. For someone who grew up in the 90s, it feels like the passing of an epoch. All our heroes, all the stalwarts we watched/heard as children, are now gone. Maybe it’s time for us to pass on the stories to kids of this generation. While we may not be able to put across those stories as eloquently as Tony himself, this generation needs to know about the man who covered everything in West Indies cricket — from the highs of their world domination phase to the lows of being the whipping boys of world cricket, to finally seeing them as kings of the shortest format. Although he was a fan of the longest format, he would’ve enjoyed reporting the West Indies’ domination at T20 — with a bit of Cozier charm and warmth.

Signing off! I wonder if YouTube has a few commentary clips I can listen to…