The British Universities cricket team was a

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

team whose players were drawn from university students studying in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. The team played under the title of Combined Universities until 1995. The team played

List A cricket List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

from 1975 to 1998 and

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

from 1993 to 2006.

History

Combined Universities' first matches in top-level cricket came in the

1975 Benson & Hedges Cup The 1975 Benson & Hedges Cup was the fourth edition of cricket's Benson & Hedges Cup. The competition was won by Leicestershire County Cricket Club. Fixtures and results Group stage Midlands Group Northern Group Southern Group Western ...

, a List A competition. In their first game, on 3 May, they beat

Worcestershire County Cricket Club Worcestershire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Worcestershire. Its Vitality Blast T20 team has been rebranded ...

by 66 runs, thanks largely to an outstanding all-round performance by future

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

captain

Imran Khan Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi ( ur}; born 5 October 1952) is a Pakistani politician and former Cricket captain who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Pakistan from August 2018 to until April 2022, when he was ousted through a no-confidenc ...

, who top-scored with 35 runs and took four wickets for four runs from 8.3 overs as Worcestershire were bowled out for 92 runs. The team played as an Oxford and Cambridge Universities side initially.Today's cricket, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', 1975-05-03, p.22. Woodcock J (1975) An unlikely double by Worcestershire, ''

'', 1975-05-05, p.7. Players from universities other than Oxford and Cambridge were first selected for the Benson and Hedges Cup in the 1987 season. The first team drawn from the wider university community, to face Hampshire on 2 May 1987, included

Nasser Hussain Nasser Hussain (born 28 March 1968) is a British cricket commentator and former cricketer who captained the England cricket team between 1999 and 2003, with his overall international career extending from 1990 to 2004. A pugnacious right-ha ...

, John Stephenson,

Martin Speight Martin Speight (born 24 October 1967) is a former English cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a wicket-keeper. After his education at Hurstpierpoint College and St Chad's College, Durham University, he played for Sussex, Wellington and ...

and

Alan Fordham Alan Fordham (born 9 November 1964 in Bedford) Alan Fordham
,

from Durham,

Mike Cann Michael James Cann (born 4 July 1965) is a former cricketer from Wales. He played first-class and one-day cricket for Glamorgan, Orange Free State, Griqualand West, Boland and the Impalas between 1986 and 1994. He was a left-handed batsman a ...

from Swansea and Peter Perera from Exeter. By 1989 there were five players from Durham in the squad but only three from Oxford and Cambridge. From 1975 to 1992 inclusive the team played only in the Benson and Hedges Cup. Their most successful year was 1989, in which a team led by future

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

captain

Mike Atherton Michael Andrew Atherton (born 23 March 1968) is a broadcaster, journalist and a former England international first-class cricketer. A right-handed opening batsman for Lancashire and England, and occasional leg-break bowler, he achieved the ca ...

and containing

, who also went on to captain England, as well as future England Test player Steve James, beat

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

and Worcestershire in the group stages, their first wins in 13 years.Smyth R (2008
The forgotten story of … the Combined Universities' 1989 B&H Cup run
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', 2008-12-08. Retrieved 2018-03-16. Worcestershire were the defending County Champions and went on to win the

1989 County Championship The 1989 Britannic Assurance County Championship was the 90th officially organised running of the County Championship. Worcestershire won their second successive Championship title. A sub-standard pitch at Southchurch Park, for which Essex ...

with seven past or future Test players in their side, yet the match "constituted a stuffing. Without doubt it is the finest ever limited-overs performance".Michael Henderson, writing in ''

'' in 1989, quoted in Smyth

op. cit. ''Op. cit.'' is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase ' or ''opere citato'', meaning "the work cited" or ''in the cited work'', respectively. Overview The abbreviation is used in an endnote or footnote to refer the reader to a cited work, standing ...

The team became the first non-first-class team to reach the knockout stages of the competition and narrowly lost by just three runs against

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

in the quarter-finals. Pringle D (2008
Degree of sorrow at demise of university cricket
''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'', 2008-09-01. Retrieved 2018-03-17. The team continued to play in the

Benson & Hedges Cup The Benson & Hedges Cup was a one-day cricket competition for first-class counties in England and Wales that was held from 1972 to 2002, one of cricket's longest sponsorship deals. It was the third major one-day competition established in Englan ...

,List A matches played by Combined Universities
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-03-16. and in June 1993 played its first first-class cricket match. Their opponents were the touring Australians at

The University Parks The Oxford University Parks, commonly referred to locally as the University Parks, or just The Parks, is a large parkland area slightly northeast of the city centre in Oxford, England. The park is bounded to the east by the River Cherwell, thoug ...

in Oxford. Combined Universities also played first-class matches against the New Zealanders in 1994 and the West Indians in 1995.First-class matches played by Combined Universities
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-03-16. From the 1995 season onwards the team was renamed British Universities, partly to reflect the fact that players were now increasingly coming from outside

Oxford University Cricket Club Oxford University Cricket Club (OUCC), which represents the University of Oxford, has always held first-class status since 1827 when it made its debut in the inaugural University Match between OUCC and Cambridge University Cricket Club (CUCC). ...

and

Cambridge University Cricket Club Cambridge University Cricket Club, first recorded in 1817, is the representative cricket club for students of the University of Cambridge. Depending on the circumstances of each individual match, the club has always been recognised as holding ...

, both of which have had first-class cricket status since the 19th century. The team played under its new title in the Benson & Hedges Cup until the end of the 1998 season when the competition was restructured.List A matches played by British Universities
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-03-16. They played another 10 first-class matches, all against touring international sides, until their final match in 2006 against the Sri Lankan tourists.First-class matches played by British Universities
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-03-16.Cricket International at Fenners

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, 2006-04-21. Retrieved 2018-03-17. The team generally used either

Fenner's Fenner's is Cambridge University Cricket Club's ground. History Cambridge University Cricket Club had previously played at two grounds in Cambridge, the University Ground and Parker's Piece. In 1846, Francis Fenner leased a former cherry orchar ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

or the

University Parks The Oxford University Parks, commonly referred to locally as the University Parks, or just The Parks, is a large parkland area slightly northeast of the city centre in Oxford, England. The park is bounded to the east by the River Cherwell, thoug ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

as their 'home' ground. From 2007, the Marylebone Cricket Club Universities team played games primarily against county second XIs until 2017, including entering the

Second XI Championship The Second XI Championship is a season-long cricket competition in England that is competed for by the reserve teams of those county cricket clubs that have first-class status. The competition started in 1959 and has been contested annually ever ...

from 2009 to 2017. This continued the tradition of playing home games at Fenner's or the University Parks, although a number of home games were also played at Leeds University's Weetwood Playing Fields. The MCC Universities team also played against other touring English teams in Dubai in 2013 and in Abu Dhabi in 2014 and 2015.

Touring sides

Teams playing under the names Combined Universities and British Universities have toured overseas on a number of occasions. A Combined Universities side played in the Netherlands in 1987 and a British Universities side played in South Africa in late 1999, playing a number of matches against South African university sides. rl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180318054332/http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Teams/0/624/Other_Matches.html Other matches played by Combined Universities CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-03-17.Other matches played by British Universities
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-03-17. In 2012 a side played two matches in Pakistan, the first time an overseas touring side had played in Pakistan since the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan team's tour bus which resulted in injuries to seven of the Sri Lankan players and the deaths of eight Pakistanis.Cricket: British Universities team confirms Pakistan tour
''

The Express Tribune ''The Express Tribune'' is a daily English-language newspaper based in Pakistan. It is the flagship publication of the '' Daily Express'' media group. It is Pakistan's only internationally affiliated newspaper in a partnership with the ''Interna ...

'', 2012-03-30. Retrieved 2018-03-17.British universities side begins Pakistan tour
''

'', 2012-04-06. Retrieved 2018-03-17.Gunmen shoot Sri Lanka cricketers

BBC Sport BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC, providing national sports coverage for BBC television, radio and online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside flag ...

, 2009-03-03. Retrieved 2018-03-17. A side took part in a student cricket competition in Sr Lanka in April 2013.

References

{{reflist 1975 establishments in England 2006 disestablishments in England English first-class cricket teams Student cricket in the United Kingdom

History

Touring sides

See also

References