Cozier, the great white hope

13 May 2016 - 09:58 By TELFORD VICE

"What? You're a white guy?!" For a man more used to asking than answering questions, Tony Cozier accepted that rude inquiry with uncommon grace.He did not reply. He did not have to. He simply smiled his warm smile as his clumsy questioner - me - stood there, gaping, gawking and gobsmacked.It was April 1992. South Africa were touring West Indies for the first time, and what a time it was.Ali Bacher, then the managing director of the United Cricket Board, endured a gruelling press conference in which West Indian journalists asked, in many different ways, what the hell he and his all-white squad, bar Omar Henry, were doing there when black people in South Africa did not have the vote.During the Barbados Test, SA's first after 22 years of isolation, a travelling South African supporter waved the flag of apartheid and another South African, a journalist in the press box, merrily used the K-word to describe our Windies rivals.At that time, Tony Cozier was a photo-less byline in newspapers and magazines and a voice on radio. And there was nothing white, to these ears at least, about that voice's accent.So to see him in all his unmistakable whiteness was politics on legs. Here, a step away from those champions of black excellence, the West Indies cricket team, stood a jolly white giant - who died in Barbados on Wednesday, aged 75.He was a great, big man who watched the Windies rise to greatness. He reported on their reign. He dissected their decline. And he did so in unimpeachable, everyman's English. Who needs hyperbole when Viv Richards and Malcolm Marshall write your stories for you with their exploits out in the middle?On that 1992 tour we were in a party of dozens that arrived at our hotel in the wee hours.The front desk was deserted until Cozier's son, statistician Craig, called out: "Cozier is here!"Instantly, a squadron of staff assembled and the Coziers were almost carried to their rooms.Best of all, Cozier wore his greatness lightly. He had been a cricket writer for 34 years when I, seven months into my career, happened onto his doorstep and asked him a stupid question. Neither then, nor in the 24 years that I knew him, did he seem anything less than in love with life. Indeed, whenever he saw a stroke he liked he would issue a jolting yell of, "Shot boy!", and to hell with pressbox etiquette.Winston Anthony Lloyd Cozier is here. Always will be...

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