Combined Universities' first matches in top-level cricket came in the 1975 Benson & Hedges Cup, a List A competition.
[1][2] Players from universities other than Oxford and Cambridge were first selected for the Benson and Hedges Cup in the 1987 season.
[3] The first team drawn from the wider university community, to face Hampshire on 2 May 1987, included Nasser Hussain, John Stephenson, Martin Speight and Alan Fordham from Durham, Mike Cann from Swansea and Peter Perera from Exeter.
The team played under its new title in the Benson & Hedges Cup until the end of the 1998 season when the competition was restructured.
[9][11] From 2007, the Marylebone Cricket Club Universities team played games primarily against county second XIs until 2017, including entering the Second XI Championship from 2009 to 2017.
[15][16] 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.