Cricket: Varsity role puts Sharma in ultra-exclusive club

Former Auckland "A" cricketer Rajiv Sharma will double the membership of an exclusive club when he walks on to Oxford's famous Parks to play Cambridge on Tuesday.

He will become just the second New Zealander to captain Oxford in a Varsity cricket match behind Martin Donnelly - recently voted in New Zealand's all-time best test XI.

"That makes it all the more special," Sharma said from his Oxford digs.

The first XIs of the two most famous universities in Britain play each other three times a year, in each of the three formats. The T20 and first-class fixtures alternate annually between Oxford's Parks and Cambridge's Fenner's, but the undoubted highlight is the annual one-day fixture at the home of cricket, Lord's.

Last year Oxford had the away changing rooms and Sharma stared up at the honours board, which lists the non-English players who have scored a century or taken five wickets in an innings, and was pleased to see several of his biggest cricket influences.

"It was quite inspiring to see four Auckland Grammar old boys who I have met and had varying influences on my career to date, including Mark Burgess, Martin Crowe, Dion Nash and Matthew Horne."

Sharma, 25, was head prefect at Grammar and is not the only high achiever in his family. Older brother Avinash, a doctor, is also studying at Oxford as he trains to be a surgeon.

Sharma says his drive to be the best he can be comes from his parents.

His father, Kuldeep, was born in India and came to New Zealand more than 40 years ago with his own father, who worked for the Indian Embassy. Anjila, his mother, is a third-generation Fiji Indian.

"My parents worked very hard to make sure that my brother and I went to the best schools and had a good all-round education. My mother got a law degree from Auckland University but chose to stay home and bring my brother and I up," Sharma said.

"She was nicknamed the 'taxi driver' by our family friends as she used to cart us everywhere from school to speech and drama to all corners of Auckland for soccer or cricket."

How Sharma came to be studying among the dreaming spires is a combination of academic ambition fulfilled and cricket ambition thwarted.

Having been in the Auckland "A" programme for four years, he was in the midst of a good run during the 2007-08 season. The Auckland selectors passed word that runs in the weekend would be followed shortly by a first-class debut. Sharma promptly scored a century for his Cornwall club ... but the call never came.

"I was disappointed, I thought I deserved a spot," recalled Sharma.

It did, however, make the decision to transplant himself to the other side of the world a lot easier.

With a Bachelor of Engineering/ Commerce degree, he was drawn to pursue a research degree in Economic Geography at Oxford, where he is on a Clarendon scholarship funded by Oxford University Press.

For his PhD thesis he is looking at the role of private institutional investors in developing urban infrastructure assets, in particular airports.

He wants to come back and use his knowledge in either a corporate or academic capacity, but first there is some unfinished business in cricket.

Oxford has given him an entree into first-class cricket - he scored 58 not out and took two wickets on debut against Worcestershire last season - but he wants to continue that at home.

Captaining Oxford will not harm his chances. He joins Douglas Jardine, Nawab of Pataudi, Colin Cowdrey, Imran Khan and Martin Donnelly as a captain of the Blues team.

"It is a great honour."