The Independent Voice of West Indies Cricket

Tony Cozier: Suffering no more

Thu, May 12, '16

 

WICB Under Scrutiny

by IMRAN KHAN

This morning I listened to a recording of a delightful radio discussion between Tony Cozier and his close friend and comrade Reds Perreira that was done on July 10th last, Cozier’s 75th birthday.

After 50 minutes of reflection and nostalgia, of the scheduled one hour discussion, the listener could sense that Perreira wanted to conclude the last segment with TC’s take on the state of West Indies cricket. With over 50 years of broadcast experience in addition to personal insight into what TC’s views are on the matter, Perreira knew he needed to tread cautiously and ease into the subject.

Perreira knew TC could unleash and seemed to want to protect him from getting too riled up. Circuitously, he posed a question about the future of world cricket as an appetizer before the broaching the main course. TC stopped him dead in his tracks, ignored the question, and went straight for the steak.

He was frank, admitted impatience and fired verbal bouncer after bouncer.

Perreira: The game (is) evolving with the supporters of Twenty20. In which direction you see the game is going? Some players not interested in playing Test cricket but more interested in IPL, for good financial reason. Are we at an interesting stage where India, Australia and England seem to be going off on their own? What’s going to happen to the world game in your mind?

Cozier: Well, to West Indies cricket. That’s what interests me. I am, and have been, for some time, very pessimistic over the future of West Indies cricket. I can’t ever seeing us coming back near to where we were in the 70s and 80s when we ruled the roost. There are a lot of reasons for it. That will take me another program me to go into them. My wife says, “oh you too pessimistic and she sings this thing, (and he bursts into tune) always look on the bright side of life”. It’s very difficult to do that now. Very. Difficult. When you see that a Test match at Kensington Oval, unless England supporters are there with no more than a thousand people watching.”

“And it’s not only at Kensington. It’s all over the Caribbean. People aren’t watching cricket. People are not engaged in cricket. I don’t think it is being promoted enough by the authorities and of course T20 cricket captures the public imagination. It’s at night, only 20 overs a team but it is artificial. It is artificial cricket. It is limited to four overs a bowler. All sorts of limitations. Whereas Test cricket has no limitations. That is the real thing and as far as we are concerned I don’t think are going to do at all well in the real thing in the future.”

Perreira then, even resorting to invoking the name of a legend, tried to soften the impact and induce some optimism from TC. Utter failure. Again he was dispatched.

Perreira: And Clive Lloyd, and his selectors, of late, going towards a very young team. Hope for the future with this young investment?

Cozier: As I just said, I have no hope. I am pessimistic. I see young players coming through but they are learning on the job and I am really very, very pessimistic about it.

Perreira abruptly ended the discussion at 52 minutes and 32 seconds with 7 minutes and 28 seconds of the hour still available. Perreira protected his friend. It was obvious he did not want his friend to have to have to further eviscerate the thing he most loved.

Few, if any, would know with any certainty precisely when this pessimism developed but 12 years ago, on the forgettable 2004 West Indies tour to England, at the SkyBox at Lord’s, TC dropped what I thought to be a bombshell. It was sacrilege and I was devastated to have heard it come from him.

“West Indies cricket,” he told me, Fazeer Mohammed and few others, “is becoming an irrelevance.”

Those were the days before T20s, and it was clear that he was referring specifically to “the real thing”.

Over the ensuing 12 years hardly a few months would go by without him reminding me of his verdict.

In the past 24 hours of reflecting on the man, and how devastated he had become about the fortunes of “real” West Indies cricket a seemingly callous but unavoidable thought struck me. It is best for TC to go now.

More than the cancer and other ailments which attacked his body and reduced him from a full bodied, full-of-life delight to a frail, feeble frame with even his voice having lost some sparkle, the diminished fortunes, and rank misfortune of West Indies cricket caused him noticeable torment.

TC is in a better place now not because he no longer has to deal with physical aches and pains but because his soul can escape the obligation of torturous comment on his abiding love, reduced and relegated from a mighty world conqueror, in the ‘real’ format, to, as he predicted, an irrelevance.

It was a burden too much for him to continue to bear. Neither Jillian’s optimism nor ‘artificial’ triumphs could neutralize the pain.

Volumes have already been written and there are volumes more to come that will attempt to capture the essence of the man. Should none succeed it will be to little surprise. How does one contextualize a man who saw it all and did it all? His body of work is unparalleled off the field and without comparative equal on it.

He has been likened to Sobers. Cozier was so prolific and prodigious, I saw him do commentary on television and radio and file daily reports during a Test match while also preparing his weekly syndicated column as well. And this was while he said he had been slowing down. Not even Sobers reached such heights in his profession.

Astutely and appropriately, Perreira allowed the recording of that birthday discussion to end with TC having the last words though with a faint crackle. Three simple ones they were.

“Thank you Reds.”

It was a simple and polite sign off that is now on the lips of the global cricket family.

“Thank you Tony.”

* Imran Khan is a former media manager of the West Indies cricket team.  He worked closely alongside Tony Cozier for many years.