The Junior Eastern Counties reaches a milestone when the competition holds its 50th round of matches this weekend.

The competition began in 1968 involving the four clubs in a format similar to that of the senior competition.

However, a couple of years ago the format was changed to a round robin to give the teams more games, with three matches instead of one for most of the sides.

The top two teams on points or net run rate will play in the final on August.

On Saturday, St David’s face champions Cleveland County at St David’s while Bailey’s Bay play Flatts at Sea Breeze Oval.

Matches continue on July 15 and August 12 with the top two teams meeting in the final on August 26.

“We changed the format a couple of years ago to give the youngsters more cricket,” said Steven Douglas, the president of the Eastern Counties Association, who played one season in the junior competition — in 1974 — helping Cleveland to dethrone then champions St David’s.

“I would like to thank the forefathers who thought of this competition, people like Paisley Burgess as well as Mr John Barritt Sr who put up the trophy, the Barritt Cup.

“I played one game, when we beat St David’s. It was under-18 back in those days, now it’s under-16s. If you look at the players today most of them came through the programme and in the very first year in 1968 that first game between Bailey’s Bay and Cleveland County was drawn.

“Back in my day you had some guys play junior and senior county at the same time, but today we are not producing the 15-year-olds who can make the county teams.

“It’s still a grooming ground for our youngsters. It took some time for people to accept the round-robin format. Last year was the first time we got the chance to play all the games.”

Carlton Smith, now the president of Cleveland, and Charlie Marshall both played in the junior competition before making the Cleveland and Bay senior teams.

Marshall is one of the all-time high run scorers in the senior counties, which is in it 113th year.

“The Junior Eastern Counties has been around longer than the Central Counties,” Smith said. “The first thing the youngsters aspire to is the junior counties and then the senior counties.”

Marshall said: “It was an excellent youth programme, it guided you through to the seniors as it was an incentive to play at the next level.

“I was captain when we beat Cleveland, but Philip Outerbridge was my captain when I started. We also used to play the junior counties on the other fields at Flatts and Cleveland. Now they only play at St David’s and Bailey’s Bay.

“At Bay most of the guys who played with me in the junior counties went on to play in the senior county, players like Ricky Hill, Chris Smith, Kirk Trott, Chris Spencer, Terry Burgess and Stan Smith.”