Oxford University Cricket Club (now closely linked to the Oxford MCC Universities (MCCU) team which incorporates Oxford Brookes University, but retaining its independence) is a first-class cricket team, representing the University of Oxford. It plays its home games at the University Parks in Oxford, England. For Oxford's first-class fixtures other than those against Cambridge University they play as Oxford MCCU (known as Oxford Universities Centre of Cricketing Excellence (UCCE) prior to the 2010 season).
Cricketers who have competed in the first-class four day Varsity Match against Cambridge University are eligible for an Oxford Blue.
The earliest reference to cricket at Oxford University is the year 1729; no less an authority than Dr Samuel Johnson was a student and later stated that he played cricket there.
Oxford University made its first class debut in 1827 when it played Cambridge University Cricket Club in the first ever University Match, which is the oldest 1st Class Fixture in the world.
Famous quotes containing the words oxford, university, cricket and/or club:
“The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“He loved to sit silent in a corner of his club and listen to the loud chattering of politicians, and to think how they all were in his power—how he could smite the loudest of them, were it worth his while to raise his pen for such a purpose.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)