Sport has been a constant feature of incoming Oxford University Cricket Club (OUCC) women’s Blues captain Charlotte Maple’s time at Oxford. Now completing her DPhil, she began at Oxford six years ago to study Ancient and Modern History at Lady Margaret Hall. As an undergraduate, she combined her demanding degree with Blues competition in both cricket and football. This year, by comparison, will be easier, she tells me.
“The only feeling I have is excitement”, Maple says when I ask how she feels about becoming captain of the Blues. “I have been playing for OUCC for six years, and I’ve been hugely invested in the squad. I’m going to make the most of it.”
Maple first played cricket when she was seven. Her father was a keen cricketer who had played the sport to a high level, and he encouraged her to play for the local village cricket club in Somerset. She was the only girl in the local team. “It felt isolating, but I fell in love with the game,” Maple tells me. Aged twelve, she was scouted for a county trial for Somerset, and after being accepted, she played county cricket for two seasons. She was told that a professional cricket career was possible, but put the sport aside to focus on GCSEs and A-levels. Her love for cricket never left, and upon arriving at Oxford, she promptly signed up to the cricket team at Freshers’s’ Fair, getting her first Blue that same year.
One of the most coveted events of the Oxford cricketing season is the annual Varsity match against Cambridge, held at Lord’s Cricket Ground. The men’’s Blues have played at Lord’s for over two centuries, but the women’’s Blues first played at Lord’s in 2022. Maple was part of the pilot squad playing that match. I ask her what it is like to play on such a historic sporting stage. “It’s an incredibly exciting and important opportunity, one that nobody else really has, to play an amateur fixture in one of the most spectacular cricket grounds”, Maple explains, her enthusiasm evident. She points out that some professional cricketers never even have the opportunity to play at Lord’s in their careers.
Maple is keen to encourage more female students to engage in cricket. She tells me that women’s cricket became a full Blue sport from 2016. Since then, the standard of women’s cricket has continually increased, as has the number of participants. Last year, a second women’s team was piloted for the first time. Beyond Oxford, women’s cricket is taking off, growing in strength in funding, professionalism and grassroots engagement. “It’s a growing sport, and we’re rising with it at Oxford”, she says, as we end the interview.
 women’s Blues captain Charlotte Maple’s time at Oxford.){kind=link}