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

17 1977/78 By taking first-innings leads in all three of their matches, North secured the Texaco Cup as Central and South, the only teams to secure outright wins in any matches, failed to pick up enough points in their other games to overhaul them. Future West Indies stalwart Gus Logie made his first-class debut for South against Central; he recorded a pair. Rain prevented any play in the scheduled Beaumont Cup match, and also thwarted attempts to rearrange it for later in the season. 1978/79 Tobago became the fifth team in the Texaco Cup league. They made an inauspicious start, failing to pick up a point from any of their four matches, two of which they lost by an innings. Among those appearing in what proved to be Tobago’s only first- class season were 16-year-old opener Clint Yorke, brother of footballer Dwight Yorke, and first-class cricket’s (unrelated) ‘other Sobers’: Salandy Sobers, who was the only player, among those with a known date of birth, to make his first-class debut in any of these matches when already past his 30th birthday. Sobers made no other first- class appearances after this season. Yorke on the other hand was one of only two of the Tobago players who made any first-class appearances outside this competition (although it was to be over eight years before he played his next first-class matches), the other being slow left-armer Alston Daniel. In its final season as a first-class competition, the Texaco Cup was shared by Central and South, with Kenrick Bailey (South) scoring the competition’s final first-class century. Leo John, who appeared in one match this season for Central, was the only player to appear in both the first and the last seasons of the first-class Beaumont/Texaco Cup. The teams in the Texaco Cup competition were below strength as two Trinidadians (Deryck Murray and Bernard Julien) were playing with World Series Cricket, and a further three (Larry Gomes, Raphick Jumadeen and Randall Lyon) were engaged on the West Indies’ tour in India. South & Central won the Beaumont Cup match, winning by only two wickets despite facing a fourth innings target of a mere 81 – and this after making North & East follow on after trailing by 195 runs on first innings. The sides were considerably weakened as the match coincided exactly with Trinidad & Tobago’s Shell Shield game in Barbados. 1979/80 The Beaumont Cup now had the ‘internal’ season in Trinidad & Tobago to itself. In a match with four Test players on each side, South & Central retained the cup despite Imtiaz Ali taking another ‘seven-for’ in their first innings. 1982/83 After two years in which the Beaumont Cup match was not regarded as first-class, it now regained that status. North & East were unable to turn their first-innings lead into an outright victory. Phil Simmons (North & East) made his first-class debut, as did Trinidad-born Robin Singh (South & Central), who went on to play Test cricket for India. This was his only first-class match in the West Indies as a ‘home’ player, although he toured the Caribbean with Indian sides in 1989 and again in 1997. 1983/84 A narrow win this time for North & East, for whom future Test player Tony Gray made his first-class debut, joining Simmons and long-serving Rangy Nanan as the only Test cricketers in the match. 1984/85 The Beaumont Cup’s swansong as a first-class competition ended with an innings win for North & East. Future West Indies wicketkeeper David Williams became the 23rd and last Test cricketer to appear in any of the first-class internal matches in Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad – history