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

7 Introduction Between April 1959 and November 1989, a total of 81 cricket matches were played in Trinidad & Tobago (62 matches) and in Guyana (19) between sides each of which represented just parts of those territories. At the time, these matches were ranked as first-class by the West Indies Cricket Board of Control, and that ranking continues to be respected today. A further four such matches - two in each territory - were arranged but abandoned without a ball bowled. These ‘internal’ matches were played over a period when the West Indies’ Test side was rising to, and maintaining, new heights in the world game, and when the teams in the region’s principal domestic competition – the Shell Shield, later the Red Stripe Cup – regularly included many of the world’s best and most-respected cricketers. So it is perhaps not surprising that little notice was taken of these more minor matches in Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana, notwithstanding their first-class status. Few of their scores were published in the cricket world’s main works of record, although versions of them were sometimes available in more ephemeral publications. But as research for this volume has discovered, many of the details that have been handed down from such sources are not always wholly accurate. Study of contemporary Trinidadian and Guyanese newspapers in the British Library has allowed the correction of many of these inaccuracies, including many relating to the dates on which particular games were played, and has also supplied some additional details such as the day-by- day close of play scores in several of the games. The corrected scorecards of the 81 matches are now brought together in printed form for the first time, together with a range of other historical and statistical details relating to them. Sadly, there remain many gaps in the record of these games, and of the similar but non-first-class matches that preceded or followed them, as also recorded more briefly in these pages. Newspaper coverage of the matches generally reduced over time, and in any case not all the newspapers that might help to fill some of these gaps are available for inspection at the British Library, or anywhere else in the UK. Maybe a visit to archives in Port-of-Spain and Georgetown might help to fill at least some of the remaining gaps, but that has not been practicable for the preparation of this volume. And there are some areas – in particular, the biographies of many of the lesser-known players – where our present records are known or believed to be deficient, but where even contemporary newspaper reports might not be able to plug the gaps. So we have to make do with the most accurate and comprehensive information that we can meticulously accumulate, and that is what this book does. There are certainly many ‘lesser-known’ cricketers within its pages; but the matches recorded here also saw appearances by some great names of the game. Here you will find the first-class debuts of the likes of Roger Harper, Carl Hooper, Bernard Julien, Gus Logie and Phil Simmons, as well as the last matches of Basil Butcher and ‘Fergie’Gupte; and there are also walk-on parts for such as Colin Croft, Roy Fredericks, Lance Gibbs, Larry Gomes, Alvin Kallicharran and Deryck Murray. These matches, minor though they may be in the overall scheme of first-class cricket, were not so minor that such players were not attracted to them. It is right that they be properly recorded.