Oxford and Cambridge Universities Cricket Team

Oxford And Cambridge Universities Cricket Team

Oxford and Cambridge Universities cricket teams (OCU) played first-class cricket for more than 150 years, although sometimes many years passed between fixtures.

OCU played a match against MCC at Lord's in 1839, in which Edward Sayres took his only ten-wicket match haul, and in 1848 played a game against Gentlemen of England at the same venue, in which William Hammersley took ten wickets.

"Oxford Universities Past and Present" teams played several first-class matches in the late nineteenth century, but did not play at that level again until 1910, when they took on the Army and Navy team. The team later undertook several overseas tours in the middle part of the twentieth century, but played only two first-class games outside Britain, both being at Sabina Park, during the tour of Jamaica in 1938. Kenneth Weekes made his first-class debut for Jamaica in the first of these, scoring 106 in the second innings.

After a thirty-year gap, the Oxford and Cambridge team returned to first-class cricket in 1968, with a match against the touring Australians, and for a quarter of a century thereafter the team had fairly regular matches against the tourists at either the University Parks in Oxford or Fenner's in Cambridge, but playing no other first-class games. OCU's final appearance was in 1992, when they played the Pakistanis.