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 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 (1803–1882)
“If not us, who? If not now, when?”
—Slogan by Czech university students in Prague, November 1989. quoted in Observer (London, Nov. 26, 1989)
“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)
“Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man’s. It is in the boys’ gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)