Because I have no time to blog in the way that will satisfy someone like, say, Vernon; because I’ve been losing sight, lately, of the fact that I was once capable of writing paragraphs more than two lines long and not preceded by a subject line; and because it’s cricket season, I’ve decided to dust off some of my cricket writings, beginning with this 2003 profile of writer and commentator Tony Cozier (first published in Caribbean Beat):

"Why, you're Tony Cozier," said the rental car man.

Cozier, you see, had spoken. Until he opened his mouth, he had simply been another middle-aged customer sent over by the Heathrow airport desk. But then he asked whether we could possibly exchange our Hyundai Sonata for a Volkswagen Passat, and Cozier metamorphosed before the elderly gentleman's eyes into an icon. Here, demanding an audacious upgrade (though let me say, for the record, that our argument was trunk space), was the voice of West Indies cricket. The talk then switched from cars to the inevitable: Brian Lara, whom Warwickshire had fined again that week; the Test series (England vs South Africa) in full swing up at Edgbaston; and what in heaven had happened to West Indies cricket? In the end, we did drive away in the Passat. Read on >>