'Tony Cozier's right up there with Garry Sobers' - Holding
Michael Holding pays tribute to Tony Cozier, who was covering cricket when Holding began playing for West Indies, and then helped the fast bowler start his commentary career
Michael Holding: First of all we have to appreciate that this is a very, very sad day. Not just for West Indian cricket, but for Tony's entire family.
Holding: Initially when Tony Cozier started covering West Indies cricket, some of the cricketers used to talk to him a lot about it everyday. Garry Sobers and people long before my time. And he said that he and the journalists had a great relationship with players. They would go on tour and they were allowed to even travel on the bus with the cricketers, which of course has changed now. So Tony's coming from that era where the journalists and the cricketers sat down, had dinner together, drinks together, travelled on the same bus, to the point where journalists started being looked upon as people who don't and shouldn't be mixing with them too much. You have to be careful of what you say around them.
Holding: A huge loss. When you look at West Indies cricket and the respected voices, and people who write about West Indies cricket over the last sixty years, it's Tony Cozier first by some distance in my opinion and then Tony Becca. We haven't seen too many people coming along to replace people like that. Who is the next person who is going to step up and be revered by people in the Caribbean? To whom people will look at and say, 'if this man writes about it, or this man says it, then we have to listen to what he is saying.' I don't see anyone taking that position at the moment.
Holding: Well, his insights. Tony Cozier knew the game. He was following the game for so long, especially West Indies cricket. He was also a former player, not at the highest level of course, but he did play at the highest level for hockey. He kept goal for Barbados in hockey, but he also played club cricket. So he knew the game, he had insight into the game, and he was always respectful of the game and the people who played it. So it was easy for people to accept Tony Cozier and acknowledge his brilliance. He knew everything about the game. Not just the tactics of the game, but statistics of the game. On so many occasions I remember calling Tony from different parts of the world. People arguing about a fact on cricket at any hour, in some bar or some place and they'd say immediately, 'I'm going to call Tony,' and they'd just ring his number because so many people had his phone number. So people always relied upon Tony, not just to discuss cricket on the day, but because they knew he had all the statistics and knew everything.
Holding: I've had a lot of meals with Tony Cozier, and one thing I can tell you about him is that he loves ice cream. Tony would never finish a meal without a little bit of ice cream. So I hope that wherever he's gone to now, heaven or wherever else his spirit is, there's ice cream there, because that will keep him going.
Holding: Someone who loved the game. Someone who worshipped West Indies cricket and someone who was not afraid to speak his mind whether he thought that people might not like it. He was always someone who spoke, in his mind, what the truth was and assessed the game and assessed conditions and everything surrounding the game and wrote and spoke about it fearlessly.