Before Statsguru or Google there was Cozier

WHEN I was a young person who dreamed of being a journalist and adored cricket, Tony Cozier was at the intersection and peak of my twin passions.

I read and collected the Cricket Quarterly avidly and still have a good few of them packed on shelves at my mum’s house. My ultimate dream was to write for it but I came to journalism a bit too late.

Still, I was honoured enough to work alongside him, even writing for a tour magazine once under his editorship, to interview him and his son Craig for a feature and to be a part of the Barbados Association of Journalists that honoured him in 2010.

My husband, who like me grew up as an avid cricket fan, commented that when his dad and friends were having the kind of raucous middle of the night cricket debates that used to be far more common, they would call Cozier to settle the argument. Because . . . Tony Cozier [was] before Statsguru and better than Google for a West Indies cricket fan.

It will be so strange next month to experience West Indies cricket without Cozier’s voice and words as a guide. But I’m so glad I got 30-plus years to do so. 

– AMANDA LYNCH-FOSTER, former NATION staffer who covered the 2007 World Cup as a features reporter.