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, oxford, university, cricket and/or club:
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)
“The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford is Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit from both. The reading men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the examination, do not work but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college doomsday.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (18911960)
“We have ourselves to answer for.”
—Jennie June Croly 18291901, U.S. founder of the womans club movement, journalist, author, editor. Demorests Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, pp. 24-5 (January 1870)