First-Class Matches Trinidad and Guyana 1958/59 to 1989/90

12 first-innings lead rather than pushing for an outright win, was changed ahead of the match in 1957, when it was decided that henceforth an outright win would be needed to secure or retain the Cup. In the mid-1950s there was little first-class cricket in the Caribbean unless an overseas side was touring, or a one-off inter-island competition had been organised. 2 In 1948/49, for example, there were only two first-class matches played in the region, both in Barbados; and in 1958/59, again, only two first-class matches were initially organised, again, both in Barbados. Whether the absence of first-class cricket from Trinidad had any bearing on the decision we do not know, but the prestige and local importance of the annual Beaumont Cup match led the West Indies Board of Control to rule that, from 1959, the annual three-day match between North Trinidad and South Trinidad should be given first-class status. At the same time, the fixture moved to being played in April, closer to the end of the ‘regular’West Indies domestic season (but not that close: in 1959, the second of the two first-class matches in Barbados ended over two months before the first Beaumont Cup match with first-class status was played). From the start of the Beaumont Cup competition in the 1920s, matches had alternated between venues in the north of the island (usually at Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain) and in the south (latterly at Guaracara Park in Pointe-à-Pierre, a ground within the confines of the Petrotrin oil refinery). This pattern continued unaltered up to and including the Beaumont Cup match of 1970, but there then began a series of changes that were to change the structure of ‘internal’ matches in Trinidad & Tobago for ever. First, from 1971 3 the Trinidad Cricket Council decided to split the ‘North’side into two teams styled ‘North Trinidad’ and ‘East Trinidad’, and similarly split the ‘South’ side into ‘South Trinidad’ and ‘Central Trinidad’. In their first season the new Central and East Trinidad sides played semi-final matches against North and South Trinidad respectively, with the winners competing in the final for the Beaumont Cup; as before, the Cup itself would only be awarded to a team achieving an outright win in the final. Unlike in Guyana (see page 110), the semi-final matches were also accorded first- class status, and so the number of first-class matches between teams from within the island of Trinidad increased from one to three. Then in the following season, and after 46 years, the Beaumont Cup was done away with altogether, being replaced by a new cup named for its sponsors, Texaco. For four seasons the Texaco Cup proceeded on the same lines as had the Beaumont Cup in its final season, except that in these years the semi-finals were always played as Central v East and North v South – meaning that the traditional opponents of North and South could never meet in the Texaco Cup final. A further change for the 1975/76 season saw the knock-out structure of the Texaco Cup competition replaced by an all-play-all league, with points awarded for outright wins, or for a first-innings lead in a drawn match (and sometimes to the teams trailing on first innings in a drawn game). There were therefore now six first-class matches in the competition for the Texaco Cup, as against the previous three. The detailed points system varied from year to year, as shown in the seasonal tables on pages 18-19. This pattern lasted throughout the four remaining seasons of the Texaco Cup as a first-class competition. The only further change came in what turned out to be the last season, 1978/79, when the four established sides were joined by a fifth, Tobago, which thus joined the first-class fray for the first time in its history (although all its first-class matches in the competition were played on the island of Trinidad) 4 . The number of Texaco Cup matches thus increased to ten. 2 The first such tournament after the Second World War was not held until 1956/57, and there was not another until 1961/62. Regular annual competition for (initially) the Shell Shield did not begin until 1965/66 3 All internal first-class matches in Trinidad were played somewhere between January and May in the year concerned. Therefore, throughout this section, reference to (for example) ‘the match in 1971’ refers to the match played in the 1970/71 season, and so on. 4 The island of Tobago eventually saw first-class cricket for the first time in February 2001. Between that date and January 2006, five first-class matches were played on Tobago, but none have been played there since. A lone fixture planned for March 2008 was cancelled owing to “flight problems”. Trinidad – history