WRIGHT & ZAMMUTO 2013 - Wielding the Willow - Processes of Institutional Change in English County...

WIELDING THE WILLOW: PROCESSES OF INSTITUTIONALCHANGE IN ENGLISH COUNTY CRICKET

APRIL L. WRIGHTRAYMOND F. ZAMMUTO

The University of Queensland

We examine institutional change processes through a longitudinal archival study ofFirst-Class County Cricket in England. We find that institutional change occurs inmature organizational fields when organizations located at the field center, periphery,and in between trigger different multilevel processes. Our results show that whensociety-level evolutionary change created organization-level resource pressures thatundermined the central values of a mature field, the group of actors between the fieldcenter and periphery served as intermediaries in the institutional change processbringing the societal, field, and organizational levels back into alignment. Our processmodel was supported over two cycles of change.

Scholars have focused increasing attention onthe process of institutional change in mature organ-izational fields for the past two decades. Organiza-tional fields are defined as “those organizationsthat, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized areaof institutional life” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983:148). In mature fields, structures of domination andcoalition among groups of organizational actors arewell established, and field participants maintainmutual awareness, interaction, and information ex-change (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). A mature fieldis stabilized by a system of values and meaningsthat defines the rules by which participants interact(Scott, 2008). Changing these fields is a difficultand complex process because the forces of routinereproduction must be broken down (Jepper-son, 1991).

The recent literature on institutional change inmature fields can be divided into two broad ap-proaches for unpacking change processes. The firstapproach focuses at the level of the field, payingparticular attention to how groups of organizationalactors located at a field’s center and peripherystruggle against each other to protect and challengethe status quo (e.g., Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006;Hensmans, 2003; Leblebici, Salancik, Copay, &King, 1991; Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003). Theterms “center” and “periphery” reflect location

with respect to the field’s central value system andrules (Shils, 1961). Actors positioned at the fieldcenter have the most commitment to and respectfor the field’s central values and rules, and actorslocated at the field periphery have the least com-mitment and respect for values and rules. Thisliterature is silent on the actions of the group oforganizational actors located between center andperiphery, which sociologists label middle-statusactors (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001).

In contrast, the second approach expands thelevel of analysis to explore how other levels in theinstitutional system influence field change. Under-pinning this approach is an assumption that insti-tutions are a nested system of society, field, organ-izational, and individual levels (Friedland &Alford, 1991; Thornton, 2002). Although scholarsagree conceptually that change is the outcome ofdynamics between these multiple levels (Barley &Tolbert, 1997), few empirical studies have exam-ined the interplay between more than two levels(an exception is Purdy and Gray [2009]). Attentionhas tended to focus either on how shifts in society-level ideology affect a field (e.g., Haveman & Rao,1997; Zilber, 2006) or on how organization-levelaction shapes field formation or change (Kraatz &Zajac, 1996; Lounsbury, 2007).

In this study, we seek to deepen scholarly under-standing of institutional change processes by com-bining these two approaches. Using a vertical lensto focus on the interaction between levels revealsthe processes by which field change may occurthrough pressures from above and from below(Schneiberg, 2006). Using a horizontal lens to lookwithin a field illuminates the processes by whichorganizational actors located at positions from a

We appreciate the comments of Royston Greenwood,Michael Lounsbury, Stephen Barley, Pamela Tolbert,Cynthia Hardy, Bob Hinings, Alan Meyer, David Merrett,Paul Brewer, Mark Dodgson, and Peter Liesch on drafts.We thank the staff of the Marylebone Cricket Club fortheir assistance with data collection. We also thank oureditor, Ann Langley, and two anonymous reviewers fortheir thoughtful advice in shaping this article.

� Academy of Management Journal2013, Vol. 56, No. 1, 308–330.http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0656

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field’s center to its periphery can shape institu-tional change through their struggles (Schneiberg,2006). Combining these two lenses permits a richaccount of the dynamics by which change pro-cesses play out across levels and different groups ofactors through time. To this end, we examine howdifferent groups of actors influence the interplaybetween society-level ideology and organization-level action in the process of institutional change ina mature organizational field. Specifically, we ask:What roles do different groups of organizationalactors play at different levels in this multilevelinstitutional change process over time?

We investigate this question empirically by ana-lyzing the field of First-Class County Cricket(County Cricket). Cricket developed in England as agame involving a ball, a bat carved from willow,and two opposing teams of 11 players. From the1850s, the field of First-Class County Cricket ma-tured into a specific competition produced bymember-owned County Cricket clubs employingcricketers as labor resources (Bowen, 1970). In con-trast to U.S. major league sports, County Cricketdefined itself not as a mass market entertainmentbusiness but as art for the middle and upper classes(Wright, 2009a). Two rules were important in thisfield definition. Classification rules separatedcricketers into the categories of amateur and pro-fessional. Amateurs, who belonged to the socialelite, “wielded the willow” of their bats in a styleesthetically superior to that of the working-classprofessionals (Birley, 2000). Qualification rulesgoverned which cricketers a County could andcould not employ. These rules were changed afterWorld War II (WWII) as outcomes of an institu-tional change process in which the field shiftedfrom its narrow definition of cricket-as-art to incor-porate cricket-as-business.

Our findings make an important contribution toa process-based understanding of institutionalchange by integrating bottom-up and top-downprocessual mechanisms to show how actors playdifferent roles in the change process in mature or-ganizational fields. Combining vertical and hori-zontal lenses, our findings illuminate how themechanisms that interact across levels in an insti-tutional change process are triggered by the actionsand reactions of different groups of organizationalactors located at and between the field center andperiphery. When deviant organization-level actionsby the periphery and shifts in society-level ideol-ogy create bottom-up and top-down pressure forinstitutional change, we find that middle-status ac-tors will seek to protect the core values of the fieldby mobilizing the center and periphery around achange that brings the societal, field, and organiza-

tional levels back into alignment. Our focus on thedynamics of interaction among different groups oforganizational actors across different levels overtime therefore contributes to a distinctive process-based understanding of institutional change. Ourfindings show how and why microlevel institu-tional shifts occur, manifested in the very concreteactions of certain field participants and the ongoingmobilization of discourses by others.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Multilevel Processual Change Mechanisms

Barley and Tolbert’s (1997) conceptual model of-fers a starting point for considering how institu-tional change plays out as a bottom-up processbetween the organizational level, where rules playout in human action, and the field level, whererules are established. Later authors extended thismodel by elaborating a top-down process of insti-tutional change created by discursive activity con-necting the societal and field levels (Phillips, Law-rence, & Hardy, 2004). However, the mutualinteraction between the societal and organizationallevels, and the impact this might have on the fieldlevel, has rarely been discussed.

Society-level ideology and field-level logics. In-stitutional scholars have proposed a key role fordiscourse in connecting the societal and field levels(Phillips et al., 2004). Society-level ideology isdrawn down into fields through discursive activityand in the form of institutional logics (Friedland &Alford, 1991). We use ideology to refer to generalvalues, beliefs, and assumptions existing at thelevel of society (Wilson, 1973) and logics to refer tospecific organizing principles at the level of thefield (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton, 2002).Our use of the term “logics” is consistent withGreenwood and Suddaby’s definition: “Institu-tional logics are taken-for-granted, resilient socialprescriptions, sometimes encoded in laws, specify-ing the boundaries of a field, its rules of member-ship, and the role identities and appropriate organ-izational forms of its constituent communities”(2006: 28).

Shifts in societal ideology, such as those follow-ing wars (Baron, Dobbin, & Jennings, 1986) or thoseconcerning awareness of the natural environment(Maguire & Hardy, 2009), create mechanisms forchanging field-level logics when they stimulate aparticular type of discursive activity described astheorization. Theorization entails specifying aproblem and expressing and formalizing explicitjustifications for change as the solution (Green-wood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002). Societal shifts

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provide an opportunity for theorization that pro-motes ideological justifications for changing fieldlogics. It follows that theorization provides a mech-anism for connecting society-level ideologies withfield-level logics for organizing.

Field-level logics, rules, and scripts. Barley andTolbert (1997) suggested that field-level logics arecarried throughout a field by rules. Rules are im-portant carriers of logics because of the way theyconstitute the reality of a field by defining differentcategories of actors, their interests, and their capac-ity for action (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Scott,2008). Rules encode institutional expectationsabout behavior that are consistent with the field’slogic in the form of scripts. Barley and Tolbert(1997: 100) defined scripts as “observable, recur-rent activities and patterns of interaction character-istic of a particular setting” that mediate betweenthe level of the field and the level of action. Coreelements of scripts that encode rules as carriers oflogics include roles for generic categories of actorsand plots connecting typified acts, interactions,and/or events (Barley, 1986). When field partici-pants perform a script by playing their roles in aplot, their behavior elicits reciprocal scripted be-havior from others, and this pattern of interactionconfirms the field logic. Following Barley and Tol-bert (1997), we suggest that institutionalization oc-curs at the intermediary level between field andorganization through the mechanism of encodingrules, as carriers of logics, into scripts.

Organization-level action. Although scripts en-code what is expected of field participants, confor-mity at the organizational level of action is notassured. This is because institutions both constrainand enable human action (Giddens, 1984). Asscripts spread throughout a field, actors translate

them into action by interpreting and reinterpretingthe abstract logics they encode (Czarniawska &Joerges, 1996). Rather than passively following thescripts, actors make and remake the connectionsbetween scripts, rules, and logics as they flowdown from higher levels. Thus, translation is dif-ferent from theorization because it relies on whatpeople actually do to cope with rules and not onthe arguments they develop concerning why therules might legitimately be changed. Translation isthe mechanism through which scripts are repli-cated or reinterpreted in human action at the or-ganizational level. Over time, translation under-mines scripts at the field level if they are not beingreproduced in action.

Processual mechanisms for institutionalchange. Our discussion suggests that changes inmature fields may be driven by pressures originat-ing from different levels of an institutional system.Table 1 summarizes the mechanisms in the changeprocess. At the societal level, pressure for changearises from theorization about shifting ideologiesand their implications for field-level logics, whichare carried by rules and encode scripts for pattern-ing human behavior. At the organizational level,pressure for institutional change arises as organiza-tions translate scripts into action inconsistent withthe rule. This results in new patterns of humanaction that, over time, revise the original script andmay lead to new rules institutionalized at the fieldlevel. A change in rules is an observable indicatorof an institutional change process involving a shiftin field logics (Scott, 2008). Although the literaturesuggests the possibility of top-down theorizationand bottom-up revision of scripts in institutionalchange, it has not considered how their mutualinteraction and impact at the field level might be

TABLE 1Summary of Processual Mechanisms

ProcessualMechanism Description Conceptual Linkages Levels

(a) Theorization The rendering of societal ideologies into field-levellogics by specifying problems and justifyingsolutions

Ideology ¡ Logic Societal ¡ Field

(b) Encoding The creation of scripts as observable recurrentactivities and patterns of interactions thatconform to rules that carry logics

Logic ¡ Rules ¡ Script Field

(c) Translating The interpretation and reinterpretation of scripts,which encode rules as carriers of logics, throughhuman/organizational action

Script ¡ Action Field ¡ Organizational

(d) Revision Patterns of behavior and interactions that deviatefrom institutional expectations and create newscripts

Action ¡ Script Organizational ¡ Field

(e) Institutionalization The formalization of a new rule to reflect a changein the field logic and scripts for action

Script ¡ Logic ¡ Rule Field

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triggered by different groups of organizationalactors.

Organizational Actors, Field Positions,and the Change Process

The multilevel processual mechanisms just dis-cussed point to how forces above and below a fieldcreate pressure for institutional change. In otherresearch, fields have been conceptualized as polit-ical arenas (Brint & Karabel, 1991) involving struc-tured systems of social positions (Bourdieu, 1989).Struggles for power and privilege occur betweenactors located at a field’s center and its periphery.Shils (1961) noted center and periphery are notgeographical terms but rather, reflect location withrespect to a central value system and its embodi-ment in rules and authority. He argued that com-mitment to central values and respect for the au-thority of rules and rule makers weakens withmovement from center to periphery (Shils, 1961).

Institutional scholars have argued that actors lo-cated at the periphery of a field are the least com-mitted to the field’s logic and are the most disad-vantaged by that logic. Peripheral actors whoassociate their disadvantaged position with the pre-vailing field logic have an incentive to take actionsthat draw down an alternative logic from the soci-etal level (Hensmans, 2003; Leblebici et al., 1991).Alternatively, elite actors located at field center arehighly embedded and are the most advantaged bythe prevailing logic. Although their interests arevested in preserving the status quo, they neverthe-less possess sufficient resources and power to ini-tiate changes intended to sustain or improve theiradvantage (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Rao et al.,2003; Sherer & Lee, 2002).

Yet although this literature offers some insightinto how different groups of organizational actorsplay a role in the change process, researcher atten-tion has focused on two locations only, the centerand the periphery. Missing from the explanation isconsideration of if and how actors located betweenthe center and periphery take actions that influencefield change. Extant literature in sociology, whichhas not been considered previously in explanationsof institutional change, suggests that the group ofactors located between the center and periphery ofa field may play an important role in reproducingfield logic. This literature distinguishes among ac-tors with high status, actors with low status, andactors in between, defined as middle-status actors(Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001). Conformity to insti-tutional rules and scripts has been shown to behigher for middle-status actors than for high- andlow-status actors (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001).

Nonconformity damages the social ranking of mid-dle-status actors, whereas high-status actors haveminimal risk of losing legitimacy, and low-statusactors face inconsequential penalties versus poten-tial reward. However, no research has examinedwhether and how interactions between thesegroups shapes an institutional change process overtime in a mature organizational field.

In this section, we outlined a theoretical back-ground to our research question: What role do dif-ferent groups of organizational actors play at differ-ent levels in a multilevel institutional changeprocess over time? To ground our answer, we de-rived from the extant literature on institutionalchange a set of mechanisms connecting society-level ideology with field-level logics, rules, andscripts and organization-level action. We then dis-tinguished the field locations of center, periphery,and in-between and considered the incentives foractors positioned at each location to take actions toreproduce or change the field logic. We turn now tothe methods we used to investigate our researchquestion.

METHODS

Case Selection

First-Class County Cricket (hereafter, CountyCricket) offered a compelling case for investigatingour research question. Unlike U.S. major leaguesports, which have a history of profit-seeking teamowners satisfying mass market demand for specta-tor sports, First-Class County Cricket clubs (hereaf-ter, Counties) produced County Championshipmatches for the aesthetic pleasure of socially eliteclub members (Cardus, 1952). A field logic ofcricket-as-art emerged in Victorian England andwas carried by rules for employing cricketers aslabor resources. A classification rule distinguishedbetween amateur and professional cricketers, and aqualification rule defined that cricketers could beemployed only by their geographic county of birthor long-term residence. These rules were changedin 1962 and 1967 through movement toward acricket-as-business logic.

In County Cricket, rules are the product of col-laborative governance. From 1787 to 1969, a Lon-don-based private members club, the MaryleboneCricket Club (MCC), governed English cricket. In1904, the MCC established the Advisory CountyCricket Committee (ACCC) to administer theCounty game. The ACCC comprised representa-tives from MCC and each of the 17 first-class Coun-ties. The MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, which metfortnightly, and the MCC secretariat carried out the


work of cricket administration on behalf of theCounties. County proposals for rule changes, ac-companied by a memorandum of justification, weresubmitted to the MCC secretary for inclusion on theagenda for the next ACCC meeting, held twiceyearly. The agenda and memorandums were thencirculated to Counties, which submitted anyamendments two weeks before the scheduled meet-ing. The MCC Cricket Sub-Committee also re-viewed the ACCC agenda. ACCC meetings werechaired by the president of MCC, recorded in min-utes by the MCC secretary, and attended by repre-sentatives of the MCC Cricket Sub-Committee aswell as the Counties. Any rule change requiredsupport of a two-third majority of County represen-tatives and confirmation by the MCC committee.Collaborative governance aided our data collectionbecause a formal procedure existed for document-ing interactions between the organizational andfield levels.

Data Collection

The MCC gave access to its private library andarchives to the first author. The MCC archivist-historian assisted with identification of relevantarchival data. Data on cricket’s early history of fieldformation were sourced from the Wisden Cricket-ers’ Almanack (published annually since 1864 andcontaining articles on English and internationalcricket and abridged minutes of governance meet-ings), 56 player and administrator biographies andanthologies of poetry and stories, and 49 scholarlybooks and articles written by sociologists andsports historiographers. For the period 1919–67, atotal of 949 documents were identified as relevantto the institutional change process: minutes of 354meetings, 13 agendas, 26 reports, 50 memoranda,195 questionnaires, 156 newspaper clippings, 146letters of correspondence, and 9 other documentssuch as speeches. Other sources included theCricketer, a magazine published annually since1921. In the discussion that follows, we identifymaterial from these archival documents with nu-merical superscripts,1 which link to entries in theAppendix.

In keeping with other institutional studies(Greenwood et al., 2002; Rao et al., 2003), a chro-nology of key events involving institutional forma-tion and change was reconstructed from bookswritten by cricket historians, the Wisden Alma-nack, and minutes of meetings. This led to thedemarcation of three stages of institutional forma-tion and change: (1) field formation and matura-tion, in which classification and qualification ruleswere established as carriers of a logic of cricket-as-

art; (2) the period 1936–62, when the classificationrule was changed; and (3) the period 1962–67,when the qualification rule was changed.

Data Analysis

To enable in-depth analysis of the first stage offield formation, we assembled a data set from thearchival sources for this period by writing sum-mary notes and extracting quotes relevant to Britishideology at the societal level; the establishment ofcollaborative governance mechanisms, logics,rules, and scripts at the field level of County Crick-et; and the establishment of County clubs at theorganizational level. The data set comprised 267single-spaced pages of text, typed in an electronicfile. Text segments were then hand-coded accord-ing to (1) what? (logic, rule, script, or action); (2)where? (societal, field, or organizational level); (3)when? (what point in time?); and (4) who? (whichclubs or committees?). As coding progressed fol-lowing procedures recommended for qualitative re-searchers (Eisenhardt, 1989; Miles & Huberman,1994), it emerged that the “what” at the societallevel was social class ideology and the “what” atthe field level was a cricket-as-art logic, which de-veloped in opposition to a cricket-as-businesslogic. Table 2 summarizes the major oppositions,which are elaborated in the first stage of analysis.An amateur script assigning a particular style ofperformance (plot) to a particular type of cricketer(role) also emerged in this period. The veracity ofour interpretation of the emergence of a cricket-as-art logic and an amateur script was confirmed by(1) viewing of artwork and artifacts displayed in themuseum at Lord’s Cricket Ground and at the houseof a private collector and (2) consultation with thearchivist-historian, the collector, and two museumguides.

Data analysis then moved on to the two timeperiods in which rule changes indicated an insti-tutional change process had occurred. Analysis be-gan by classifying Counties according to their loca-tion at the field’s center, periphery, and in-betweenat the end of field formation and maturation, whichwe define as the end of 1935, when the MCC ap-pointed its first commission to examine the field.Field location classification was based on two sum-mary measures derived from Shils (1961): relativecloseness to the field’s central value system—inour case, the logic of cricket-as-art—and relativecloseness to the field’s rule-making authority.Criteria for the former measure included numberof years competing in the Championship, desig-nation as a cricket ground able to host interna-tional Test matches, and historical Champion-


ship success, and criteria for the latter includedconvenience of traveling to London for committeemeetings and relationships with MCC. As we ex-plain below, these criteria were important in deter-mining the Counties’ status, power, and resources.

Applying these criteria allowed us to give eachCounty Cricket Club a summary rating as “high,”“medium,” or “low” for its closeness to the field’scentral value system and a summary rating as“high,” “medium,” or “low” for its closeness to thefield’s rule-making authority. Three combinationsonly of the two measures emerged from our data:high-high, medium-medium, and low-low. The useof Shils’s two measures to determine field locationis likely to produce more varied combinations infields with larger numbers of participants. How-ever, our data set comprised only 17 Counties thatself-governed their field through committees, as de-scribed earlier. Collaborative governance meantthat County representation on and proximity to thefield’s hierarchy of committees provided a mecha-nism for affirming and disseminating values.Therefore, it was not unexpected to find that aCounty that was close to the field’s central valueswas also close to the rule-making authority.

Six Counties were rated high on both closeness tothe field’s central value system and rule-makingauthority; six Counties were rated medium on bothmeasures; and five Counties were rated low on bothmeasures. We confirmed the veracity of our criteriaand ratings through independent discussions with

the MCC archivist-historian and with a cricket ex-pert who assists authors with historical fact check-ing. Table 3 summarizes our classifications of thefield positions of Counties.

We labeled the six Counties that were classifiedas closest to the field’s central value system andauthority structures as central elites. As shown inTable 3, central elites comprised the foundingChampionship competitors, with Kent and Surreyplaying their first match in 1840. They enjoyed alarge and loyal membership with traditional valuesand, as home to four of the six Test grounds, gainedstatus from staging international matches. A centralelite won the Championship on all but three occa-sions from 1890 to 1935.

Disciples of the cricket-as-art logic and tradi-tional guardians of the field, central elites gainedpower through their relationships with MCC. Keyamateurs and administrators of all Counties weremembers of MCC, but central elites were morelikely to hold positions on the MCC Cricket Sub-Committee and/or be MCC office bearers. Middle-sex, Surrey, and Hampshire dominated the numberof representatives and office bearers. With the ex-ception of the two northern Counties, central eliteswere located in close proximity to London, whichfacilitated committee representation by reducingthe burden of traveling to meetings. There was ahigh level of informal interaction between centralelites and MCC (for example, we found letters in-viting central elites to meet at private homes to

TABLE 2Oppositions between Logics of Cricket-as-Art and Cricket-as-Business

Dimensions Logic of Cricket-as-Art Logic of Cricket-as-Business

Field structure Field of Restricted Production Field of Large Scale ProductionCapital prioritized (Bourdieu, 1993) Symbolic capital Economic capitalEmphasis on cricket as a cultural

productAesthetic Utilitarian

Most valued consumers County members Mass market (spectators paying at the gate)Criteria for decision making (March

& Olsen, 1984)Appropriateness Consequences

Primary source of legitimacy(Suchman, 1995)

Moral Pragmatic

Structures for interorganizationalrelationships

HierarchyHistorically specified

MarketIndividually controlled

Archetypes for sportingcompetition

Traditional ChampionshipLong battles (three-day matches)

Modern cups and leaguesShort contests (limits on each team’s innings)

Archetypes for organizationalstructures

Traditional county boundariesMember-owned and financed clubsDecision-making power vested with

committees

Customer segmentsStructures appropriate for maximizing returnsDecision-making power vested with owners of

resourcesArchetypes for acquisition of labor

resourcesCartel of employers Labor as free agents

Most valued labor resources Amateurs valued on social class Cricketers valued on meritFormal rules for employment of

labor resourcesOppositional classificationNaturalized qualification

Universal classificationInstant qualification


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discuss cricket matters2 and private correspon-dence about actions of marginal players (see below)undermining central elites).3

We labeled the six Counties that had a mediumlevel of closeness to the field’s central value systemand authority structures as peripheral elites. Asshown in Table 3, this group included both found-ing Championship competitors and later entrants.Although their memberships were loyal and rela-tively sizable, and two peripheral elites hosted Testgrounds, membership in these Counties lacked thesocial status of membership in a central elite club.Peripheral elites had solid representation on theMCC Committee and some representation on theMCC Cricket Sub-Committee, with Sussex a strongvoice. Clustering around the south, west and lowernorth of England, they found London relativelyaccessible for meetings.

Finally, we labeled the five Counties that had thelowest level of closeness to the field’s value systemand authority structure as marginal players. Weborrow the term from Scott to represent “actorswho are at the periphery of a field” (2008: 102).This group joined the Championship after the MCCofficially consecrated it as “first class” in 1894.Marginal players had small memberships and lim-ited representation on the committees of MCC.They were geographically and culturally distantfrom London; Glamorgan, located in Wales, wasespecially so (the archives contained correspon-dence indicating travel to meetings posed a timeand financial burden).4 No marginal players stagedTest matches, and a marginal player always fin-ished in last place and never won a Championshipduring our classification period.

Having classified the field location of eachCounty at the end of 1935, when the field hadformed and matured, we analyzed the change pro-cess involving the classification rule from 1936 to1962 (see Wright, 2009b). Reading iterativelywithin and between the documents, we traced (1)chains of arguments used to challenge or defendthe status quo by different committee members,acting as representatives of individual County in-terests, and by different committees, acting as rep-resentatives of collective field interests (theoriza-tions); (2) actions taken by individual Counties toacquire financial and human resources, such asapplications to register cricketers, payments tocricketers, and establishment of new sources of fi-nance (translations); and formal passage of newrules (institutionalization). As segments of textwere hand-coded for mechanisms and levels, pat-terns emerged that refined our coding and revealed

mechanisms for the encoding and revision ofscripts. Because a text segment was coded as refer-encing a field script when it assigned a particularstyle of performance (plot) to a particular type ofcricketer (role), shifts in plots and/or roles becameapparent over time. As discussed later, we labeledthis mechanism of script revision “displacement.”When coding was completed, we iterated betweenwhat, where, when and who by asking how thesewere connected. This led to second-order insightsabout the interplay between societal, field, and or-ganizational levels in the process of institutionalchange.

To address our research question on the role ofdifferent groups of organizational actors in thechange process, we extracted 246 statements attrib-uted to individual County representatives from theminutes, memorandums, and reports of CountyCricket’s subcommittees and committees relevantto amateur status. Each statement was made in re-sponse to the possibility of changing the classifica-tion rule by removing amateur status and recatego-rizing all players as cricketers. We codedstatements according to whether they expressedsupport for, or rejection of, the existing classifica-tion rule and the extent to which the County rep-resentative justified support or rejection throughlogics, scripts, societal ideology, and/or organiza-tional practices following Elsbach and Kramer’s(1996) method of mapping evidential patterns inorganizational statements.

Finally, we repeated the coding procedures toanalyze the role of individual Counties in thechange process for the qualification rule. We ana-lyzed the minutes of meetings, memorandums, re-ports, and other documents in which Counties pro-posed and contested a rule change regarding thequalification of cricketers. A total of 173 statementswere extracted from archival documents and codedfor their expression of rules, logics, scripts, societalideology, and organizational action.

Our method conforms to Lincoln and Guba’s (2000)principles of methodological and interpretative rigor.Interpretations were derived from multiple docu-ments, increasing confirmability through “triangula-tion” (Jick, 1979). Confirmability was enhanced bydiscussing emergent insights with the MCC archivist-historian and other experts. Finally, the process weuncovered was confirmed, repeating over two changecycles. In the next section, we present the findings ofour three stages of analysis. As is appropriate in his-torical archival research, we use extensive endnotes,presented in the Appendix, to provide full historicaldocumentation (Hill, 1993).


INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE PROCESSES INCOUNTY CRICKET

Stage 1: Formation of the Field of County Cricket

The first cricket matches were staged as publicentertainment in England in the 1700s, when socialclass hierarchies ordered postfeudal society (Bir-ley, 2000). During visits to their country estates, thenobility and gentry assembled cricket teams, in-cluding servants, to compete for wagers (Altham,1962). As interest grew in this “glorious, manlyBritish game,”5 codification of the “laws of cricket”and emergence of rudimentary club structures fol-lowed.6 By 1800, the MCC, boasting membership oflanded aristocrats, became the law-making author-ity and “mother of cricket.”7 Cricket productionremained informal until the field was institution-alized in the Victorian era, and “by common con-sent gained the appellation noble,”8 in response tosocietal and organizational pressures.

At the societal level, the Industrial Revolutionhad spawned a middle class of businessmen, civilservants, and other professionals who aspired toposition themselves closer to the upper classes oflanded aristocracy and further from working classlaborers in factories and mines. They in partachieved this repositioning by an identity of moralcharacter developed through education, religion,and organized sports (Mangan, 1981). The Churchof England promoted cricket as “a manly recre-ation” that “calls into requisition all the cardinalvirtues . . . fortitude, patience, self-denial.”9 It wasalso included in the curriculum of elite schools anduniversities to foster sportsmanship and leader-ship, as “the discipline and reliance on one anotherwhich it teaches is so valuable.”10 Learning to“Play up! play up! and play the game!”11 preparedschoolboys for their future roles in empire. Whenalumni traveled throughout the colonies, they usedcricket to diffuse ideas about Anglo-Saxon charac-ter (Kaufman & Patterson, 2005): “The game ofcricket, philosophically considered, is a standing‘panegyric’ on the English character: none but anorderly and sensible race of people would so amusethemselves.”9

At the organizational level, middle-class aspi-rants sought membership in the MCC and emergingelite cricket clubs organized around the geographicunit of a county.6 Clubs were managed by electedcommittees; landowners and aristocrats took onpresidential roles, and military officers, clergy, andprofessionals performed administrative duties(Marqusee, 2005). Clubs banned wagering andstaged cricket matches, “untainted by vulgarity orcrudity,”8 to entertain members. Each match wasplayed over three days by two teams of 11 players

each. One team batted while the opposing teambowled and fielded the ball. Pairs of batsmen triedto score runs by hitting the ball and running fromone end of the batting pitch to the other. The bowl-ing team sought to dismiss each batsman by takinghis wicket in a variety of ways. The winner was theteam with the most runs after each team had battedtwice. A draw was declared if no team was dis-missed twice in the three days allocated forthe match.

Teams were composed of amateurs from the up-per and aspirational middle classes, who were re-imbursed only for expenses, and working class pro-fessionals who received salaries. Because amateursreceived coaching at elite schools and universitieswhere cricket was “character training,”10, 12 the am-ateur style of play differed visibly from that ofprofessionals. In the language of scripts (Barley,1986), because cricketers titled as amateurs playedcricket for pleasure as an expression of their moralcharacter (role), they played in an exuberant andaesthetic style (plot). The amateur “wielded thewillow” of the bat “as great artists use fiddles, paintbrushes, pianos,”13 playing strokes that turned “theold one-stringed instrument into a many chordedlyre.”14 Professionals performed an oppositionalscript: because their livelihood depended oncricket performance (role), the professional ad-opted a workmanlike defensive style motivated byresults (plot). Whereas for amateurs, “cricket was adance with a bat in your hand,”15 professionalsavoided using their bat for anything that “neverwere a business stroke.”16

Interaction of class-based values at the societallevel and club production of scripted cricketingperformances at the organizational level drove for-mation of a new field around a logic of cricket-as-art (Wright, 2009a). The field met Bourdieu’s (1993)description of a “field of restricted cultural produc-tion,”a type of field that (1) produces cultural goodsfor a public of producers of cultural goods, such ashigh-brow art being produced for other artists; (2)evaluates products using legitimacy criteria devel-oped by the field itself; and (3) prioritizes the ac-cumulation of symbolic capital over economic cap-ital. County members, as owners of clubs, producedcricket as a cultural product for themselves as pro-ducing consumers and were educated to appreciatethe esthetics of a three-day match and the amateurscript. Despite some cross-subsidization of costs bygate spectators from the working class, club mem-bers enjoyed substantial autonomy to develop non-market criteria for cricket production. Embracing alogic of cricket-as-art, members evaluated cricket asa “dramatic spectacle, which belongs with the the-


atre, ballet, opera and the dance”17 (James, 2005:258).

Formal governance of the field of restricted cul-tural production was introduced by MCC from1873 to 1894 to “consecrate” (Bourdieu, 1993: 78)authentic first-class cricket and cricketers. Clubsbecame consecrated as First-Class Counties byplaying a minimum number of three-day matchesagainst MCC and other Counties (Bowen, 1970).First-class cricketers were consecrated throughclassification and qualification rules. The classifi-cation rule created “amateur” and “professional” asan oppositional pair of titles and publicly affirmedthe superior status of the amateur: “No gentlemanought to make a profit by his services in the cricketfield.”18 A logic of cricket-as-art requires cricketersable to perform as artists, and the rule encoded ascript in which cricketers titled as amateurs“wielded the willow” in a style distinctive to, andvalued in, the field of restricted cultural produc-tion: “It stands to reason that cricket dominated byamateurs must be livelier than cricket in whichprofessionals set the tone.”19 We label this the “ti-tled amateur script.”

In turn, the qualification rule specified that crick-eters could play either for their county of birth or oftwo-year residence but could not play for multipleCounties in a single season.18 By mandating thatlabor resources be naturalized into the soil of aCounty, this rule affirmed the pastoral roots of theupper classes as the appropriate definition for be-longing in the field of restricted cultural produc-tion and precluded market-based definitions of be-longing as a tradable commodity. Counties wereexpected to produce attractive Championshipcricket using an indigenous supply of amateursand, if necessary, naturalized professionals. Crick-eters born outside of the United Kingdom, labeled“overseas players,” could belong in County Cricketonly after being naturalized.

Formalization of governance structures and rulesof oppositional classification and naturalized qual-ification ensured that the field remained distinctfrom, and hierarchically superior to, other forms ofcricket production and other commercial sports,such as football. County Cricket “must not be tam-pered with to please people who think it can havethe concentrated excitement of an hour and a half’sfootball,”20 for “County Clubs will then steadilydeteriorate into mere ‘firms,’ like Football LeagueClubs, who simply provide public entertainmentsby the medium of troupes of paid players.”21 Fieldsof restricted cultural production exist in oppositionto fields of large-scale production, which producecultural products for the public at large (Bourdieu,1993). Opposing the field of restricted cultural pro-

duction of County Cricket was the field of large-scale cultural production of league cricket clubs,emerging in the industrial areas of Northern Eng-land in the 1880s. Leagues produced Saturdaymatches, placing time limits on each batting team,to satisfy working class demand for spectator sportsof short duration. The County Cricket field of re-stricted cultural production saw itself as “a cultand a philosophy inexplicable to the profanum vul-gus . . . and the merchant minded”22 represented bythe field of large-scale cultural production.

Stage 2: Changing the ClassificationRule, 1936–62

After forming as a field of restricted cultural pro-duction of cricket-as-art, Counties faced decliningrevenue as crowds fell during the Great Depressionand, because fewer cricketers could afford to playas amateurs, rising labor costs for professionals.Counties avoided bankruptcy through donationsfrom benefactors and a share of profits from Testcricket. Conformity to the cricket-as-art logic un-dermined the viability of marginal players, whofaced the dual problems of low membership and aninadequate stock of naturalized cricketers. At theend of 1935, MCC appointed a commission to ex-amine the County game. Affirming the need to pre-serve “the art and character of the game,”23 thecommission’s (1937) report concluded the presenceof amateurs was “desirable for obvious reasons.”23

To reduce delay in qualifying amateurs, the com-mission recommended special registration for “ex-ceptional cases”23 of cricketers not naturalizedthrough birth or residence. Introduced in 1939, thisrule assisted Counties to “get going again”24 in1946 after WWII depleted stocks of healthycricketers.

Translating and scripting at the organizationallevel. Postwar commitment to cricket-as-art at thefield level intensified pressures on marginal play-ers for financial and human resources. They re-sponded to the contradiction between field legiti-macy and organizational efficiency by translatingthe field logic in three ways. First, marginal playersraised funds by imitating an organizational formvisible in football and league cricket, known as“supporters’ clubs” (Table 3). Generating incomefrom lotteries and gambling pools, supporters’clubs officially had “no ties”25 to a cricket club and“stuck to the old formula to help and not hinder.”25

By decoupling, marginal players showed symbolicconformity to the field of restricted cultural pro-duction logic while achieving efficiency by subsi-dizing cricket production through a cricket-as-busi-ness organizational form. Peripheral elites followed


by introducing their own supporters’ clubs. From1956 to 1960, the average ratio of annual incomefrom supporters’ clubs to normal cricket incomewas 0.94 for marginal players, 0.23 for peripheralelites and zero for central elites.26

Second, marginal players translated the qualifi-cation rules so as to improve their access to profes-sional cricketers. Marginal players with small pop-ulations and supporters’ clubs had both the motivefor and financial capacity to engage in translation.For example, Northamptonshire, cross-subsidizedby a 61,000 member supporters’ club, interpretedspecial registration as a routine method of qualify-ing nonnaturalized professionals and registeredfour times as many cricketers as other Counties inthe five years prior to 1949. Marginal players madethe same number of applications for special regis-tration in the 1949 and 1950 seasons as peripheraland central elites combined, with central elites sub-mitting only a third as many applications as mar-ginal players.27 To keep marginal players in check,peripheral and central elites used the ACCC toplace quotas on a County’s specially registeredplayers in 1951 and prescribed special registration“as only an alternative to qualification by residence[that] should not be regarded as the normal methodof qualification.”24

Moreover, central and peripheral elites sought to“clear up any doubt”28 as to what constituted legit-imate recruitment of overseas-born professionals.The ACCC ruled that three years’ residency in theUnited Kingdom was required for special registra-tion. Registration was forfeited if cricketers playedin any other first-class competitions, includingmatches representing their home countries. How-ever, since marginal players continued to face ashortage of indigenous cricketers, they translatedthe rule into action by importing overseas cricket-ers willing to qualify by residence because “nocountry, except England, plays sufficient FirstClass Cricket, either at home or on tours, to supportprofessionalism.”29 Thus, marginal players trans-lated overseas players as resources to be natural-ized after active importing, rather than as alreadynaturalized resources employed serendipitously.Because this translation contradicted traditionalbelonging to a field of restricted cultural produc-tion, central and peripheral elites defined “import-ing (as) a real problem”30 and used the ACCC tolimit Counties to a quota of two overseas players in1957. In the four years from 1957 to 1960, salariespaid to professionals constituted 43 percent of totalexpenses for marginal players, 35 percent for pe-ripheral elites, and 28 percent for central elites.31

Third, marginal players translated the classifica-tion rule to improve access to amateurs. To sustain

itself as a field of restricted cultural production,County Cricket required a supply of amateurs ableto perform the titled amateur script. Yet two worldwars had depleted cricketer stocks, and socioeco-nomic change had reduced the number of indepen-dently wealthy individuals willing to play as ama-teurs. The classification rule allowed amateurs tobe refunded out-of-pocket expenses only. However,when cricketers sought payment for loss of earn-ings without forfeiting the “social status of an am-ateur title,”29 marginal players and, to a lesser ex-tent, peripheral elites translated the rule byreimbursing “phony”32 expenses and paying ama-teurs for administrative duties never performed.From 1958 to 1962, no central elite made paymentsto amateurs employed in administrative positions,whereas every marginal player and half the periph-eral elites did so.33 Four marginal players and oneperipheral elite were investigated for what centralelites and other peripheral elites considered “ex-cessive payments of amateur expenses”34 and “hy-pocrisies”34 of paying cricketers for nominal ad-ministrative duties, including as a “public relationsofficer”35 with a supporters’ club. Marginal playersjustified paying key amateurs for their time as ameans of preserving “the leadership, drive and en-terprise traditionally associated with the ama-teur.”36 Marginal players, arguing MCC was “inter-fering too much in their domestic affairs,”37

resisted field attempts to police financialarrangements.

Over time, translation of the classification rulescaused an observable disconnection between roleand plot in the performance of the titled amateurscript vis-à-vis the professional script. Regardingthe role, field participants generally observed thatinstead of playing cricket for pleasure not profit,some titled amateurs “retained their amateur statustitle while continuing to derive their income eitherwholly or in part from the game”38 and “someamateurs were far better paid than the profession-als.”39 Regarding the plot, they also observed thatonly some cricketers titled as amateurs wielded thewillow in the exuberant amateur style, while othersperformed the defensive, results-oriented plot ofthe professional. The latter group “steadfastly re-fused to “have a bang” irrespective of the state ofthe game.”40 Only the “genuine amateur”41, 39, 42 or“true amateur”43, 44, 45, 46 wielded the willow forpleasure. The amateur plot remained unques-tioned by the field as “of great value to thegame”47 because it carried the field of restrictedcultural production logic of cricket-as-art. In con-trast, the role of titled amateur was problematicbecause the observable patterns of behavior dis-puted causality between possessing the title of am-


ateur and wielding the willow. A title no longerdrove the plot of the amateur script. The titledamateur role was displaced in the new script,which we label the “genuine amateur script”: gen-uine amateurs (role) play in an aesthetic and exu-berant style (plot).

Societal change, shifting logics, and a newclassification rule. Translation and script dis-placement caused bottom-up pressure for institu-tional change. At the same time, theorization ofsocietal change created top-down pressure. Twowars and decline of empire accelerated progressionfrom class-based hierarchization toward egalitari-anism as the legitimate organizing principle forEnglish society. Shared sacrifice and military ef-forts organized on merit had eroded the gap be-tween the working and middle classes (Holt, 1993).As a new collective identity was forged, class dis-tinctions were perceived as pretentious. Progres-sion toward egalitarianism undermined cricket as afield of restricted cultural production, an identitythat requires producers able to produce cricket asart and consumers cultivated to appreciate it(Bourdieu, 1993).

The producing aspect of this field of restrictedcultural production was undermined by overreli-ance on professional labor, an outcome of marginalplayer translation in response to the shortage ofamateurs from England’s shrinking upper class. In1936, 48 percent of cricketers who played at leastone County Championship match were classifiedas amateurs. In all Counties, these amateurs playedsubstantially fewer Championship matches thandid professionals. In Championship matchesplayed during the 1936 season, amateurs repre-sented 21.3 percent of the labor force of centralelites; 23.2 percent for peripheral elites; and 20.8percent for marginal players.48 By 1960, the num-ber of amateurs playing at least one Championshipmatch had fallen from 175 amateurs in 1936 to 64in 1960, and the number of professionals rose from191 to 262. The decline in amateurs was most pro-nounced for marginal players. In Championshipmatches played during the 1960 season, amateursrepresented only 6.4 percent of the labor force ofmarginal players. In contrast, amateurs represented15.1 and 20.8 percent of the labor forces of centralelites and peripheral elites respectively, achievedprimarily through a significant increase in the av-erage number of Championship matches played byeach amateur compared to the 1936 season. Withfewer cricketers performing the amateur plot, cen-tral elites noted County Cricket “developed a ten-dency to be less artistic, less dramatic and perhapsless moral.”49 The “approach of the modern crick-

eter to batting”50 was unattractive, lacking “posi-tive fight between bat and ball.”51

Societal progression toward egalitarianism alsoeroded the consuming aspect of cricket’s field ofrestricted cultural production by shrinking the baseof cultivated consumers who valued the artistry ofthe Championship. For gate spectators, “a three-day cricket match is a long drawn-out affair, which,in the modern world, lacks the element of excite-ment which so many competitive activities pro-vide.”51 Although central elites believed membersremained “the true cricket enthusiast”52 and“should always constitute the basis of a County’seconomy,”53 vulnerable marginal players and pe-ripheral elites introduced supporters’ clubs. Thisraised criticism from the MCC and central elitesstating that “it was wrong for County cricket to bekept alive by artificial means”54 and spawned fieldinquiries in 1957 and 1960–61 to consider how togrow “interest and active support”55 for cricket.The latter inquiry reported that after excluding“non-normal”56 income from supporters’ clubs,“only about six clubs could hope to break even”57

(see Table 3).The ACCC devised a solution to appeal to “the

modern public who wanted entertainmentvalue,”58 rather than aesthetic edification, fromwatching cricket. In 1963 they introduced a Knock-Out Cup with matches completed in a single day.The Cup was an outcome of an institutional changeprocess that moved the field of restricted culturalproduction’s anchor in response to societal andorganizational pressures. It did not represent artbeing usurped by business as the core logic for thefield (Wright & Zammuto, 2013). Rather, the centralelite’s objective in agreeing to a “cup,” decoupledfrom the “proper”57 contest of the three-day Cham-pionship, was to ensure survival of the field ofrestricted cultural production by increasing “spec-tator appeal”49 without causing “a set-back inprestige.”56

The impact of England’s growing egalitarianismon the producing and consuming aspects of thecricket field of restricted cultural production waseventually carried through to a change in the clas-sification rule. The shift from hierarchical to egal-itarian ideologies of social class was drawn downinto the field by peripheral elites and marginalplayers who questioned the “snob value of amateurstatus”58 and the “insulting and derogatory com-ment on modern professionals”59 implied an oppo-sitional classification. This theorization comingdown from the societal level aligned with the gen-uine amateur script coming up from organizationalaction. Theorization that “in this democratic age atrue amateur should not require the benefits of


distinction to be publicly known”59 was supportedby scripting in which “an alteration in the name ofa cricketer would not in any way alter his attitudeto the game.”39 Thus, the amateur plot core to thefield of restricted cultural production was pre-served while the socially unpalatable oppositionalclassification was removed.

We found that when a subcommittee of ACCCwas first set up to consider a rule change in 1957,central elites were strongly supportive of retainingamateur status because they took for granted thecricket-as-art logic and valued social class distinc-tions and the titled amateur script. Marginal play-ers, too, were initially supportive of retaining op-positional classification, perceiving the field rule toexist independently of their own practice of finan-cially compensating cricketers who wanted to playas amateurs. Marginal players sought to retain am-ateurs as symbols of the cricket-as-art logic withoutbelieving in the substance of that logic. Peripheralelites challenged the capacity to separate symbolfrom substance. For peripheral elites, if the amateurtitle was to be retained, then the rule should betightened to prevent payment of amateurs; other-wise oppositional classification made no sense andshould be abandoned. Thus, peripheral elites weresufficiently embedded in the cricket-as-art logic forpayment of amateurs to be recognized as contradic-tory but not so embedded they took the existence ofthe rule for granted. They were the first group ofCounties to conceive that it was possible for theplot of the amateur script to be preserved withoutthe amateur title.

Over time, marginal players joined peripheralelites in rejecting the classification rule. This oc-curred after the MCC set up a standing committeein 1958, comprising representatives from itself andfrom central and peripheral elites, to monitor pay-ments made to amateurs. When the committeeacted on four “doubtful cases” involving marginalplayers, they questioned whether retaining amateurstatus was worth the loss of financial autonomy. Asthe representative for one marginal player com-plained, “The inference when you analyse it reallyis that this Committee who do not appear to knowthe ramifications of our cricket organization aretelling me that I do not know my job. I do not thinkthey have the right to do that.”60 Marginal playersthen supported peripheral elites in seeking an egal-itarian rule change that would not impede their useof practices consistent with a cricket-as-businesslogic at the organizational level. The central eliteswere never supportive of the rule change because itundermined the cricket-as-art logic at the core oftheir identity and power base. However, they rec-onciled its inevitability in an egalitarian society

with preservation of the amateur plot through thegenuine amateur script.

The outcome of alignment between societal,field, and organizational pressures in the institu-tional change process was a new field rule in whichthe oppositional classification of amateur and pro-fessional was replaced with the universal classifi-cation “cricketer.” The new rule, legislated at theend of 1962, stated, “All players in First-ClassCounty Cricket shall in future be called cricketersand that any financial arrangements made withthem will be the sole concern of their respectiveCounties.”44 Timed to coincide with the start of theKnock-Out Cup, the new rule was a carrier of a fieldlogic in which the boundary between cricket-as-artand cricket-as-business was less distinct. Theboundary achieved through qualification rules re-mained intact, with the ACCC affirming the needfor cricketers to be naturalized, albeit with residen-tial qualification reduced to two years to appeaseoverseas cricket boards.

Stage 3: Changing the QualificationRule, 1962–67

Having secured a change in the classificationrule, peripheral elites sought to further the institu-tional change process by proposing a change in thequalification rule. Our coding revealed that periph-eral elites put forward proposals to the ACCC in1962, 1963, and 1964 to permit employment ofoverseas players not naturalized through residence.Two Counties proposed the change, Nottingham-shire and Gloucestershire. Both had been elitemembers when the field first emerged in the Victo-rian era and aspired to improve their current fieldposition by employing overseas “stars”61 as “crowdpullers.”62

Kept afloat by revenue from supporters’ clubs butfacing declining gates at Championship matchesdue to poor performances, Nottinghamshire andGloucestershire had observed the impact of world-class overseas players on attendances in Australiandomestic cricket and league cricket in the U.K.Although both Counties employed some natural-ized overseas cricketers, the existing rule limitedrecruitment of world-class cricketers, who were un-willing to sit out two years of cricket to establishresidential qualification. The proposed rule changecarried a shift from a relatively pure field of re-stricted cultural production to one in which thedominant cricket-as-art logic was forced to incor-porate cricket-as-business practices for survival.This shift had begun with the change in the ama-teur classification rule, producing a less elitist andmore decentralized labor market for cricketers, and


with the Knock-Out Cup innovation, signaling cen-tral elite acceptance of the necessity of adoptingsome practices underpinned by a cricket-as-busi-ness logic to preserve the cricket-as-art logic at thecore of the weakened field of restricted culturalproduction.

Central elites contested the appropriateness offurther crowd-pulling business practices. On eachoccasion in 1962, 1963, and 1964 when peripheralelites proposed instantly qualified overseas play-ers, central elites responded by using control of theMCC Cricket Sub-Committee and RegistrationCommittee to circulate antichange memorandumsto all Counties. Change, they predicted, would leadto “auctions” in which “overseas stars,” who hadno loyalty to an adopted County, agreed to play forthe “highest bidder.”63, 64, 65 The implication wasthe rule “would only be of advantage to the wealthyCounties”64 able to afford the world’s best cricket-ers by siphoning funds from supporters’ clubs. By1960, two marginal players were earning more in-come from their supporters’ clubs than two centralelites were earning from their entire cricket opera-tions.66 Concerned they would lose their dominantfield position, for three years central elites pre-scribed boundaries around how far the cricket-as-business logic could penetrate the field of restrictedcultural production by banning nonnaturalizedoverseas stars. Central elites construed their entryas creating an artificial Championship devoid of“natural”67 rivalry grounded in traditionalbelonging.

Central elites initially gained support from mar-ginal players in opposing a rule change. Because“Counties with a small population were at a disad-vantage so far as obtaining first class cricketers,”68

some marginal players and peripheral elites hadtranslated the existing qualification rule into actionby adopting “a policy of recruiting talent whereverin the world it can be found”69 and pursued crick-eters from countries such as the West Indies, Aus-tralia, and India willing to qualify by residence. Asshown in Table 3, this resulted in marginal playersoutperforming peripheral elites in the Champion-ships. Marginal players finished last in the Cham-pionship only 5 times from 1950 to 1967, comparedto 13 last placings for peripheral elites and zero forcentral elites.70 Thus, those marginal players whohad improved their performance by importingcricketers under the existing rule had little incen-tive to vote to change it. As with their response tothe classification rule, marginal players’ support ofretaining naturalization was symbolic rather thansubstantive, for their active importing strategy—they conceded their teams resembled “a Cricket

League of Nations”69—was inconsistent with tradi-tional belonging within the cricket-as-art logic.

Commitment to naturalization was weakenedfrom the mid 1960s. After oppositional classifica-tion was removed, English cricketers abandonedthe genuine amateur script for a professional scriptin which field participants generally noted thesecricketers performed cricket not as art but as work:“The ultra professional approach, where efficiencyand a misguided belief that negative tactics pay,has produced a stereotyped pattern which is deadlyto watch and which gives the appearance of beingboring to play.”71 In contrast to this “dull, drab”72

style, overseas players performed with “color, char-acter and accomplishment.”73 These new patternsof behavior displaced the genuine amateur script.The overseas player was scripted into the role ofgenuine amateur because the field observed the“excellent craftsmen”74 who learned their cricketoutside of the U.K. performed the plot of wieldingthe willow with character and artistry. They ad-opted “an enterprising manner . . . a really dynamicattitude”75 and brought “added life and colour”76

to the game. Performance of the amateur plot wasespecially observable in West Indian players:“Cricket is a game for enjoyment and the WestIndies certainly convey the impression they enjoyplaying.”77 The new script displaced the amateurrole while preserving the amateur plot: overseasplayers (role) play in the aesthetic and exuberantstyle of the amateur (plot).

Script displacement produced bottom-up pres-sure on central elites to adopt a less restrictiveapproach to qualification rules to preserve the art-istry of Championship cricket in the field of re-stricted cultural production. This was supported bytop-down pressure from societal progression to-ward egalitarianism. The press argued the field had“a moral duty”78 to open the labor market and thatit was “negligent”79 to exclude cricketers on thebasis of an elitist qualification rule of naturaliza-tion. Surveys of the public and County membersaffirmed that England’s modern egalitarian societydid not understand the exclusion of overseas starswho could provide entertaining cricket or protec-tion of the employment of English cricketers whodid not. The surveys were conducted by an inquirycommittee set up by MCC.71 Comprising represen-tatives from each group of Counties, the inquirycommittee proposed the ACCC reduce the qualifi-cation period for overseas cricketers in 1966. Mostperipheral elite and marginal players were in sup-port. However, a two-third majority was unattain-able when central elites preferred to appeal toCounty captains to produce cricket more consistentwith the genuine amateur script.80


When the boring play continued through the1966 season, gate spectators declined from the twomillion who paid to see Championship cricket in1950 to half a million, and County membership fellfor the first time.81 Central elites proposed reducingqualification periods to one year for the 1967 sea-son, which was agreed on.82 At season end, periph-eral elites and marginal players proposed instantqualification.83 Only four Counties—three centralelites and one marginal player—were opposed.This rule change was another outcome of the ongo-ing institutional change process aligning a shift infield logic with societal and organizational pres-sures. Naturalization did not fit with societal pro-gression towards egalitarianism. Peripheral elitesand marginal players theorized, “The old concep-tion that a cricketer should be establishing his fam-ily in the county of his adoption is a relic of theamateur game. When a man is earning his living inany occupation he gets the job first and then takesup residence.”84 Naturalization put inappropriateresource constraints on Counties by impeding em-ployment of cricketers able to perform the artistryof the amateur plot: “These overseas players willreplace the old amateurs—players who went outthere to entertain.”85

At the field, central elites insisted on quotas andconditions on transfers to prevent the “descent ofcricket into the commercial level of soccer.”86

Thus, the rule change was a carrier of increasedpermeability in the boundary between logics ofcricket-as-art and cricket-as-business. A practiceconsistent with the latter—importing star cricketersto increase gates—was made legitimate because itpreserved the field of restricted cultural produc-tion’s survival, albeit in a less pure form, and itpreserved the cricket-as-art logic that was a sourceof power, status, and identity for the central elite.

DISCUSSION

In this study, we examined the role that differentgroups of organizational actors play in institutionalchange processes occurring across societal, field,and organizational levels over time. We focused onthree groups of actors located at field center, pe-riphery, and in between. Our findings make a novelcontribution to the literature on institutionalchange processes by showing when and why dif-ferent groups of actors become motivated to triggerand respond to different processual mechanisms atdifferent levels. We find that the middle-statusgroup acts as an intermediary in the top-down,bottom-up change process in response to actionstaken by the center and periphery when evolution-ary change occurs in mature organizational fields.

Processual Mechanisms and Groups ofOrganizational Actors in Institutional Change

We present our findings on the institutionalchange process in County Cricket as a three-stagemodel in Figure 1. Our model shows how institu-tional change, as indicated by rule changes, oc-curred at moments of alignment between progres-sions of societal, field, and organizational levels. Atthe societal level, the organizing structure for Eng-lish society evolved from an ideological foundationof social class in stage 1 toward egalitarianism instages 2 and 3. At the field level, the logic of crick-et-as-art moved away from its anchor at the field ofrestricted cultural production end of Bourdieu’s(1993) dichotomy in stage 1 to end stage 3 as a lesspure field of restricted cultural production locatedcloser to the field of large-scale cultural productionlogic of cricket-as-business. Rules were carriers ofthis progression between ideal-type anchors, withnew rules delimiting the progression away from thecricket-as-art logic core to the definition of thefield. Finally, the role and plot dimensions of thescripts coming up from action at the organizationallevel were progressively displaced in stages 2 and3. We found that when scripts were translated intohuman action inconsistent with the scripts them-selves, displacement occurred over time. The un-problematic element of a script, which could beeither the role or the plot, was preserved, and theproblematic element was replaced with somethingmore representative of both human action and in-stitutional values. Thus, a role or a plot may bedisplaced as scripts are revised.

Moments of alignment in the institutional changeprocess were achieved via mechanisms of theoriza-tion, encoding, translating, revision/displacement,and institutionalization. Figure 1 shows how theformation of County Cricket as a field of restrictedcultural production was produced in stage 1 by (1)theorization drawing down from societal ideologyabout social class and (2) action, which createdscript 1 of the titled amateur feeding up from theorganizational level. The rules of oppositional clas-sification and naturalized qualification carried thelogic of cricket-as-art throughout the field. Theserules were encoded in the script and replicated inaction at the organizational level from the late1800s through WWI and WWII. Field formationpositioned organizational actors at the center, pe-riphery, and in between vis-à-vis the field’s centralvalues and rule-making authority. These groupstriggered and responded to different processualmechanisms in subsequent stages of the institu-tional change process.


In stage 2, society-level progression away fromsocial class after WWII exacerbated resource pres-sures at the organizational level. The capacity oforganizational actors to access financial and humanresources was restricted relative to their field loca-tion. Central elites located closest to the center ofthe field faced the lowest resource constraints be-cause of their size, history of success, and loyalmembership and were the most committed to thelogic of cricket-as-art. In contrast, actors located atthe field periphery were the most resource-con-strained. Because these marginal players sub-scribed superficially to the values embedded in thecricket-as-art logic, they were also the most cogni-tively open to deviating from institutional rulesand expectations for sourcing cricketers. Marginalplayers reduced their resource disadvantage by de-viating from the field-level logic through organiza-tion-level acts of translation, resulting in some mar-ginal players outperforming peripheral elites.

Peripheral elites had a foot in both the center andperiphery. Like central elites, they subscribed tothe cricket-as-art logic; like marginal players, theystruggled with postwar resource constraints. When

the deviant translations of marginal players furtherincreased these resource pressures and under-mined the central values of the field, peripheralelites were uniquely positioned to perceive the lackof alignment between societal, field, and organiza-tional levels as an institutional contradiction (Seo& Creed, 2002). Rules made sense as carriers of fieldlogics only if they were enforced, and the field wassustainable only if its central logic accommodatedsocietal evolution.

Peripheral elites leveraged their position be-tween the center and periphery of the field to bro-ker between central elites and marginal players forincremental institutional change to bring the soci-etal, field, and organizational levels back into align-ment. When peripheral elites joined central elitesto police the rules, marginal players mobilized tosupport field change because policing would re-verse the performance gains achieved through theirtranslations. Having manipulated marginal playersinto supporting field change, peripheral elites thenreduced central elites’ resistance through theoriza-tion that connected societal evolution to the newscripts coming up from the resource-seeking trans-

FIGURE 1Processes of Institutional Change in English County Cricketa

a

Cricket Logic

Art • Business Art Business Art Business

Action Payment of amateurs. Misuse of registration. Supporters’ clubs.

Action Purposeful recruitment of overseas players. Political campaigning.

1967

RULE CHANGE 1962

RULE CHANGE RULE ESTABLISHMENT 1873/1894

ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL

FIELD LEVEL

TIME

Action Informal production of cricket matches.

Cricket Logic

Art • Business

Cricket Logic

•

a a

Class-Based Hierarchy Egalitarianism

b be e e

c cd d d

a

SOCIETAL LEVEL

Rules: Oppositional classificationand naturalized qualification.

Rules: Universal classificationand naturalized qualification.

Rules: Universal classification andinstant qualification within limits.

Script 1: Cricketers with the title of amateur (role) play in the amateur style (plot).

Script 2: Cricketers who playin the amateur style (plot) aregenuine amateurs (role).

Script 3: Overseas players (role)play in the amateur style (plot).

a Codes for arrows: a � “theorization”; b � “endoding”; c � “translating”; d � “revision/displacement”; e � “institutionalization” (seeTable 1). In the “Cricket Logic” boxes, bullets indicate the shift between the cricket-as-art and cricket-as-business logics over time.


lations of marginal players. Script 2 of the genuineamateur had displaced script 1 by preserving theplot dimension of the original script and displacingthe role dimension. The peripheral elites theorizeda new classification rule (universal classification)would bring the field’s logic back into alignmentwith the societal shift toward egalitarianism andwith the new script feeding up into the field fromthe organizational level. The new rule was institu-tionalized by County Cricket’s rule makers and en-coded script 2 as institutional expectations foraction.

In stage 3, the mechanisms repeated for thechange in the qualification rule. Peripheral elitesagain acted as intermediaries in a top-down, bot-tom-up change process through theorization tobring the field back into alignment with the societaland organizational levels. Further progression to-ward egalitarianism had occurred in societal ideol-ogy, and a new script, script 3, had displaced script2 and fed up into the field from translations ofmarginal players.

Our findings offer new insight into the literatureon middle-status conformity and the literature oninstitutional change. In keeping with the argumentfrom sociology that middle-status groups conform(Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001), we found that theinitial deviant response came from actors at theperiphery and not from those between the centerand periphery. We found, however, that this lattergroup of organizations became motivated to brokerin the interest of change, rather than conform,when they perceived the periphery’s deviant ac-tions threatened their own survival and the field’scommon purpose and values. Extending institu-tional studies that have focused narrowly on therole of either center or periphery in initiatingchange (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Hensmans,2003; Leblebici et al., 1991; Rao et al., 2003), wefind that the group of actors between center andperiphery plays an important role in mediating top-down, bottom-up change processes.

Scope Conditions and Future Research

Although our data collection and analysis werelimited to a single case study of one cultural field,we believe our theoretical insight that the group ofactors between a field’s center and periphery serveas intermediaries in top-down, bottom-up institu-tional change processes is generalizable to otherfields within two scope conditions. First, our find-ings apply to mature organizational fields only andnot to emerging fields. In a mature organizationalfield, internal structures of domination and pat-terns of coalition are well established, and partici-

pants share a common understanding of the fieldand its boundaries from other fields (DiMaggio &Powell, 1983). The field is also stabilized by a sys-tem of values that defines the rules by which par-ticipants interact (Scott, 2008). This allows partic-ipants to be located in meaningful groups at thefield center, periphery, and in between in relationto the field’s central value system and authoritystructure. Moreover, in mature fields informationexchange and interaction between participants isdeep, frequent, and codified (DiMaggio & Powell,1983). Thus, the actions of each group of field par-ticipants are visible to, and consequential for, othergroups and the field as a collective. Without thisvisibility and mutual dependence, the group be-tween the center and periphery is neither aware of,nor disadvantaged by, the deviant actions of theperiphery. It follows that the necessary motivationfor peripheral elites to engage in a field-level polit-ical response to the organization-level deviance ofmarginal players is absent in emerging fields, inwhich information exchange, interaction, andshared purpose are tacit, informal, and stilldeveloping.

Second, our findings apply only to mature fieldsimpacted by evolutionary societal change and notto those affected by discontinuous change threaten-ing field survival. Evolutionary change in societalideology triggers the processual mechanisms weobserved that ultimately motivated a group be-tween the center and periphery to act to bring thefield logic back into alignment with societal andorganizational levels. Their action involved theori-zation of incremental changes in institutional rulesand practices reflecting a movement along a con-tinuum between multiple field logics as idealtypes. We expect to see this same process playingout in other fields in which societal progressiontoward modernity feeds down into a field as a shifttoward a market logic and away from a logic his-torically framed as its opposition. This includesother cultural fields, such as museums (DiMaggio,1991; Oakes, Townley, & Cooper, 1998) and orches-tras (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2005), and professionalfields, such as health care (Reay & Hinings, 2005,2009; Scott, Ruef, Mendel, & Caronna, 2000) andaccounting (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Suddaby& Greenwood, 2005).

Our study suggests a new point of departure forfuture research into institutional change may be toconceive of multiple logics not as discrete units butas continuums between ideal types. This may pro-vide new insight into the processual mechanismsby which multiple logics play out in fields overtime (Greenwood, Diaz, Li, & Lorente, 2010; Rojas,2010) and how hybridized logics emerge at the


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organizational level (Battilana & Dorado, 2010).Our findings also invite future research into howthe process of institutional change varies in maturefields impacted by discontinuous societal change,such as fields facing political revolutions and ex-ogenous shocks such as the oil crisis and, poten-tially, climate change. The processual mechanismsare likely to differ between institutional changetriggered by societal disruptions and societal evo-lutions of the type we study here. More research ina variety of “disrupted” and “evolving” fields isneeded to further unpack this scope condition.

Finally, our findings highlight the important roleof scripts in institutional change processes andpoint to the need for more research into scriptdisplacement as a mechanism for institutionalchange and maintenance. In contrast to a recentstudy of Cambridge dining hall rituals, which re-ported that organization-level scripts maintain theBritish class system at the societal level (Dacin,Munir, & Tracey, 2010), we found that scripts wereinverted to support societal evolution from socialclass hierarchies to egalitarianism. That is, thesame scripts encoding cricket-as-art at the begin-ning of the institutional change process were usedto theorize the introduction of a limited number ofrules and practices consistent with a cricket-as-business logic at the end. Future research may ex-plore the different processes by which scripts func-tion to maintain or change institutional logicswithin organizational fields.

Conclusions

Scholars of institutional change have made sig-nificant inroads into building a body of knowledgeabout how change plays out in mature organiza-tional fields. However, research to date has tendedto privilege either a vertical lens, emphasizingchange processes across the multiple levels of aninstitutional system, or a horizontal lens, focusingon contests among field participants in drivingchange (Schneiberg, 2006). Our study shows theadvantages of incorporating both lenses for build-ing processual explanations of the dynamics of in-stitutional change. By examining which groups oforganizational actors were triggering and respond-ing to different mechanisms at different levels inthe change process over time, we were able to de-velop a richer account of how and why resources,interests, and actions affect institutional changethan was possible to do in previous studies. Thedynamics of interaction among field center, periph-ery, and in between, across levels over time, illu-minates how and why microlevel institutionalshifts occur, manifested in the very concrete ac-

tions of some field participants and the ongoingmobilization of discourse by others. Although ourfindings are limited to a single case study, it cov-ered a sufficiently lengthy time period to confirmthe processual mechanisms linking societal, field,and organizational levels and the role played bydifferent groups of actors over two cycles of insti-tutional change. Because this offers some confi-dence in the processes we uncovered, we encour-age other researchers to combine vertical andhorizontal lenses to develop process theories ofchange.

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April L. Wright ([email protected]) is a seniorlecturer at the University of Queensland BusinessSchool. She received her Ph.D. in management from theUniversity of Queensland. Her research focuses on insti-tutional logics and institutional change.

Raymond F. Zammuto ([email protected])is a professor of strategy at the University of QueenslandBusiness School. He received his Ph.D. in organizationalbehavior from the University of Illinois. His research


uses organization theory as a framework to study organ-izational culture, adaptation, and institutional change.

APPENDIX

Archival Sources

1. Committee governance procedures, as explained inthis section, were sourced from minutes of the meet-ing of the ACCC, March 14, 1962, and minutes of themeeting of the MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, March18, 1957.

2. For example, correspondence dated December 11,1953, states: “As I regard you as one of the few whounderstands Laws and Rules, I think you had bettercome over to my house . . . it will be quite impossibleto arrive at the correct decision at a big Committeemeeting and so I feel that some of us must make thedecision beforehand, after going very thoroughly intothe two cases and we must persuade the Committeeto agree with our decision.”

3. For example, correspondence dated March 18, 1958,from Lancashire to the MCC secretary, states: “Theodd thing is that we are yielding income to Countieswho really do not need it at all. I am referring toCounties like Glamorgan, Derbyshire and Worcester-shire and many others who have such a considerableincome from sources not connected with cricket thatthis will be a mere drop in the ocean. They may, ofcourse, say and I suppose quite rightly that we couldhave a supporters club if we wished. Whilst this istrue of Surrey, Yorkshire and Lancashire it is, I imag-ine, not the case with MCC.” The MCC secretaryreplied on March 20, 1958, that “I agree with you thatwe are yielding income to many Counties who reallydo not want it.”

4. For example, correspondence dated March 23, 1961,from the Glamorgan secretary to the MCC secretarystates: “I have no desire to come up and attend theMeeting. It seems to me quite unnecessary to addanother £10 on to the cricketing expenses to do so.”The minutes of the ACCC meeting dated March 17,1965, also note the “inconvenience” of travel expe-rienced by marginal players.

5. Opening lines of “An Heroic Poem” by John Love,first published in 1744, reprinted in S. J. Looker,1925, Cricket: A Little Book for Lovers of the Game(London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent).

6. The history of cricket from the mid 1700s to mid1800s is recorded in a 15-volume work (Scores andBiographies, Fred Lillywhite, 1862). It records Kentvs. Surrey as the first inter-County match in 1773.The Laws of Cricket were first codified in 1744 andsubsequently revised in 1774.

7. England v Australia (1911–1912 Tour), by Sir PelhamWarner (1912, MCC). Warner was a first-class crick-eter for Oxford University, Middlesex, and Englandfrom 1895 to 1920, later becoming MCC president.

8. The Guide to Cricketeers, Lillywhite (1849) (pub-

lished annually from 1848 to 1866 and a forerunnerto the Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack).

9. The Cricket Field, Reverend James Pycroft; first pub-lished in 1851; 1922 edition published by St. JamesPress, edited by F. S. Ashley Cooper.

10. Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Thomas Hughes (1857).11. Newbolt (1925). “Vitaï Lampada,” Sir Henry New-

bolt, was first published in 1912.12. The Badminton Book of Cricket was first published

in 1887 (Longmans Green, London); see also (SirTheodore) Cook (1927), Character and Sportsman-ship (Williams & Norgate, London).

13. Cardus (1922). Neville Cardus was a music critic andcricket writer for the Manchester Guardian, and hisarticles and books elevated cricket to the intelligen-tsia in the 1920s.

14. The Jubilee Book of Cricket, Prince K. S. Ranjitsinhji(1897, Wm. Blackwood & Sons). Prince Ranji playedfirst-class cricket for Cambridge University, Sussex,and England from 1893 to 1912.

15. Batchelor (1951). C. B. Fry, quoted, played first-classcricket for Oxford University, Sussex, Hampshire,and England from 1894 to 1921.

16. Birley (2000); quote attributed to Louis Hall, profes-sional cricketer in the 1880s.

17. C. L. R. James’ autobiographical book was first pub-lished in 1963.

18. MCC’s amateur classification rule written in 1878.19. Sir John Squire, “Introduction,” Cricket, by Neville

Cardus (1931, Longmans Green, London).20. Pardon (1911).21. Letter to the editor, Cricket (May 1913).22. Fry (1937).23. Report of the Commission to Investigate the Prob-

lems Confronting the Counties Taking Part in theFirst-Class County Championship (Findlay Commis-sion), December 1937.

24. ACCC (1950).25. Memorandum, February 8, 1962, “Supporters”

Clubs,” sent to members of the Cricket EnquiryCommittee.

26. Calculations based on County annual financial re-cords submitted to the ACCC for the period 1956–60.Normal cricket income was defined by the ACCC asconstituting all membership revenue, gate and standrevenue, season tickets, car park (summer only),score cards and publications, sale of rights (televi-sion, photography, cushions), catering (summeronly), share of Test match profits (including televi-sion and broadcasting), foreign tours share, and plu-vious insurance claims (wet weather).

27. Data calculated from the minutes of 15 meetings ofthe Registration Committee from April 11, 1949, toJanuary 8, 1951, in which marginal players made 24,peripheral elite 17, and central elite 8 applicationsfor special registration.

28. Proposal submitted to the ACCC by MCC secretary toamend rule 3 of the “Rules of County Cricket,” datedNovember 15, 1950.

29. Memorandum written by the chairman of the Ama-teur Status Sub-Committee, titled “An appreciation


of the problems connected with the enquiry intoamateur status in English cricket,” dated September30, 1957.

30. Minutes of the meeting of the Special Sub-Commit-tee re Future Welfare of First-class Cricket, January23, 1957.

31. Calculations based on County annual financial re-cords submitted to the ACCC for the period 1957–60.Total expenses were defined as administration, pro-fessional staff, rent and rates of the County ground,maintenance and upkeep of turf, cost of matches,insurances, utilities, lunches and teas at matches,and printing.

32. Minutes of the meeting of the Cricket Enquiry Com-mittee, May 29, 1962.

33. Minutes of meetings of Amateur Status StandingCommittee, June 25, 1958, July 19, 1960, and April11, 1961.

34. Minutes of meeting of Amateur Status StandingCommittee, November 28, 1957, and correspondencebetween MCC secretary and Somerset, July 11, 1958.Allowable expenses for amateurs are for traveling byrail, car, and taxi to matches; hotels and meals; tip-ping; upkeep of clothing and equipment; and enter-tainment allowance for captains.

35. Correspondence between MCC secretary and chair ofthe Amateur Status Standing Committee, March17, 1961.

36. Memorandum “Amateur Status,” prepared by theSub-Committee on Amateur Status for the CricketEnquiry Committee, dated May 29, 1962.

37. Letter sent by MCC secretary to the chairman of theAmateur Status Standing Committee, dated Novem-ber 7, 1958. Also letters sent to the Amateur StatusStanding Committee by Derbyshire secretary datedAugust 14, 1958; by Northamptonshire secretarydated November 12 and 17, 1958; by Worcestershiresecretary dated October 29, 1958; and by Glamorgansecretary dated April 26, 1960.

38. Quote is from a letter from Northamptonshire to Ama-teur Status Standing Committee, dated February 15,1961. Similar comments were expressed by otherCounties in minutes of meetings of MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, ACCC, Special Sub-Committee re AmateurStatus and a field conference on amateur status and byplayers at the captains’ meetings. Editorials in the Wis-den Almanack and articles in the Cricketer and news-papers carried similar commentary. That a field con-sensus had emerged around a new script was furthersupported in scholarly books on cricket history.

39. Minutes of meeting of Special Sub-Committee reAmateur Status, November 15, 1957.

40. Minutes of the County Captains Meeting, December12, 1956.

41. Memorandum on amateur status prepared by Glam-organ and circulated to all Counties and MCC, datedNovember 26, 1962.

42. Minutes of the meeting of the MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, November 13, 1962.

43. Memorandum prepared by two members of MCCCricket Sub-Committee, dated October 29, 1962 andcirculated to all Counties.

44. Minutes of Advisory County Cricket Committeemeeting, November 26 1962.

45. Minutes of the meeting of the Special Sub-Commit-tee re Amateur Status, January 31, 1957.

46. Memorandum written by Kent to support the club’sproposal to the ACCC, dated September 24, 1962.

47. Report of Special Sub-Committee to Examine Ama-teur Status, February 14, 1958. As with note 38, thequote is from a single document, but similar viewswere expressed by field-level committees, individualCounties, and the cricket media in a range ofdocuments.

48. The number and percentages of amateurs reported inthis paragraph are calculated from the scorecards ofall County Championship matches played in 1936and in 1960.

49. Fry (1958). Reply by MCC secretary to letter from thepublic, dated March 25, 1957.

51. Memorandum titled “The importance of the firstday’s play in County matches” and dated February21, 1961, written by member of Cricket Enquiry Com-mittee and circulated to all committee members.

52. Minutes of the meeting of Cricket Enquiry Commit-tee, November 23, 1961.

53. Minutes of meeting of the Special Sub-Committee reFuture Welfare of First-class Cricket, November 28,1956 and Report of the Special Sub-Committee reFuture Welfare of First-class Cricket, January12, 1957.

54. Minutes of the meeting of the Cricket Enquiry Com-mittee, March 21, 1961.

55. Minutes of the meeting of Special Sub-Committee reFuture Welfare of First-class Cricket, October15, 1956.

56. Minutes of the meeting of Special Sub-Committee reStructure of First-Class Cricket, April 25, 1961.

57. Minutes of the meeting of Special Sub-Committee reStructure of First-Class Cricket, June 16, 1961.

58. Minutes of meeting of Special Sub-Committee reAmateur Status, October 9, 1957.

59. Memorandum written by Glamorgan to support theCounties proposal to the ACCC, dated November26, 1962.

60. Glamorgan and the Amateur Status Standing Commit-tee exchanged 11 letters from April 26, 1960, to May 4,1961. Similarly, when a cricketer’s amateur status wasruled as invalid and the cricketer subsequently refusedto play as a professional, Northamptonshire stated thefollowing in a letter of complaint to the Amateur StatusStanding Committee dated May 18, 1960: “The loss ofa Test cricketer to the game is a prospect which myCommittee view with dismay.”

61. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC meeting, Decem-ber 7, 1964.

62. Final Report of the Special Sub-Committee of ACCC,chaired by D. G. Clark, dated December 16, 1966.

63. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, November11, 1962.


64. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, December9, 1963.

65. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 18, 1964.66. Calculations based on County annual financial re-

cords submitted to the ACCC for the period 1957–60.67. Minutes of the meeting of the MCC Cricket Sub-

Committee, March 9, 1964.68. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, December

7, 1964.69. Fraser (1950). The Warwickshire club approved this

article’ calculations were based on County Champi-onship records in Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack.

71. Final Report of the Special Sub-Committee of ACCC,chaired by D. G. Clark, dated December 16, 1966.This subcommittee was made up of the chairman ofKent, treasurer of MCC, former captain of Englandand Sussex, vice chairman of Essex, chairman ofYorkshire, chairman of Surrey, captain and Countysecretary of Glamorgan, captain of Middlesex, secre-tary of Surrey, secretary of Leicestershire, secretaryof Northamptonshire, and a cricket correspondentfor a national daily newspaper. Information collectedby the special subcommittee included a question-naire completed by all Counties, a “national opinionpoll” of the general public administered through anewspaper, a postal survey of County members, anda postal survey of all County players (in excess of 100replies). Given the make-up of the special subcom-mittee and its information sources, the quote con-tained in the final report of this special subcommit-

tee expresses field consensus that a new script hademerged.

72. “When the circus comes to town,” Observer, Novem-ber 26, 1967.

73. “Still some doubts about importing stars,” Guardian,November 28, 1967.

74. James D. Coldham, “Ups and Downs of Northamp-tonshire,” Wisden Almanack, 1958, p. 75. Memoran-dum, “Tempo of the Game,” written by chairman ofthe Cricket Enquiry Committee and circulated tomembers, dated February 21, 1961.

76. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 14, 1962.77. Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack (1964). “Don’t give

Gary out this time,” Daily Mirror (November 28,1967).

79. “Qualification must be waived,” Times, November28, 1967.

80. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 12, 1966.81. Irving Rosenwater, article in The Cricketeer, August

1967, p. 2.82. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 15, 1967.83. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, November

29, 1967.84. Memorandum written by Gloucestershire club to

support proposal submitted to the ACCC meeting,November 29, 1967.

85. Agenda for the meeting of the ACCC, November29, 1967.

86. “Overseas players can be signed at once,” Daily Tele-graph (November 30, 1967).


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