Academy of Management Journal

2013, Vol. 56, No. 1, 308330.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0656

WIELDING THE WILLOW: PROCESSES OF INSTITUTIONAL

CHANGE IN ENGLISH COUNTY CRICKET
APRIL L. WRIGHT
RAYMOND F. ZAMMUTO
The University of Queensland
We examine institutional change processes through a longitudinal archival study of
First-Class County Cricket in England. We find that institutional change occurs in
mature organizational fields when organizations located at the field center, periphery,
and in between trigger different multilevel processes. Our results show that when
society-level evolutionary change created organization-level resource pressures that
undermined the central values of a mature field, the group of actors between the field
center and periphery served as intermediaries in the institutional change process
bringing the societal, field, and organizational levels back into alignment. Our process
model was supported over two cycles of change.

with respect to the fields central value system and

rules (Shils, 1961). Actors positioned at the field
center have the most commitment to and respect
for the fields central values and rules, and actors
located at the field periphery have the least commitment and respect for values and rules. This
literature is silent on the actions of the group of
organizational actors located between center and
periphery, which sociologists label middle-status
actors (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001).
In contrast, the second approach expands the
level of analysis to explore how other levels in the
institutional system influence field change. Underpinning this approach is an assumption that institutions are a nested system of society, field, organizational, and individual levels (Friedland &
Alford, 1991; Thornton, 2002). Although scholars
agree conceptually that change is the outcome of
dynamics between these multiple levels (Barley &
Tolbert, 1997), few empirical studies have examined the interplay between more than two levels
(an exception is Purdy and Gray [2009]). Attention
has tended to focus either on how shifts in societylevel ideology affect a field (e.g., Haveman & Rao,
1997; Zilber, 2006) or on how organization-level
action shapes field formation or change (Kraatz &
Zajac, 1996; Lounsbury, 2007).
In this study, we seek to deepen scholarly understanding of institutional change processes by combining these two approaches. Using a vertical lens
to focus on the interaction between levels reveals
the processes by which field change may occur
through pressures from above and from below
(Schneiberg, 2006). Using a horizontal lens to look
within a field illuminates the processes by which
organizational actors located at positions from a

Scholars have focused increasing attention on

the process of institutional change in mature organizational fields for the past two decades. Organizational fields are defined as those organizations
that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area
of institutional life (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983:
148). In mature fields, structures of domination and
coalition among groups of organizational actors are
well established, and field participants maintain
mutual awareness, interaction, and information exchange (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). A mature field
is stabilized by a system of values and meanings
that defines the rules by which participants interact
(Scott, 2008). Changing these fields is a difficult
and complex process because the forces of routine
reproduction must be broken down (Jepperson, 1991).
The recent literature on institutional change in
mature fields can be divided into two broad approaches for unpacking change processes. The first
approach focuses at the level of the field, paying
particular attention to how groups of organizational
actors located at a fields center and periphery
struggle against each other to protect and challenge
the status quo (e.g., Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006;
Hensmans, 2003; Leblebici, Salancik, Copay, &
King, 1991; Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003). The
terms center and periphery reflect location
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 for
their assistance with data collection. We also thank our
editor, Ann Langley, and two anonymous reviewers for
their thoughtful advice in shaping this article.
308

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2013

Wright and Zammuto

fields center to its periphery can shape institutional change through their struggles (Schneiberg,
2006). Combining these two lenses permits a rich
account of the dynamics by which change processes play out across levels and different groups of
actors through time. To this end, we examine how
different groups of actors influence the interplay
between society-level ideology and organizationlevel action in the process of institutional change in
a mature organizational field. Specifically, we ask:
What roles do different groups of organizational
actors play at different levels in this multilevel
institutional change process over time?
We investigate this question empirically by analyzing the field of First-Class County Cricket
(County Cricket). Cricket developed in England as a
game involving a ball, a bat carved from willow,
and two opposing teams of 11 players. From the
1850s, the field of First-Class County Cricket matured into a specific competition produced by
member-owned County Cricket clubs employing
cricketers as labor resources (Bowen, 1970). In contrast to U.S. major league sports, County Cricket
defined itself not as a mass market entertainment
business but as art for the middle and upper classes
(Wright, 2009a). Two rules were important in this
field definition. Classification rules separated
cricketers into the categories of amateur and professional. Amateurs, who belonged to the social
elite, wielded the willow of their bats in a style
esthetically superior to that of the working-class
professionals (Birley, 2000). Qualification rules
governed which cricketers a County could and
could not employ. These rules were changed after
World War II (WWII) as outcomes of an institutional change process in which the field shifted
from its narrow definition of cricket-as-art to incorporate cricket-as-business.
Our findings make an important contribution to
a process-based understanding of institutional
change by integrating bottom-up and top-down
processual mechanisms to show how actors play
different roles in the change process in mature organizational fields. Combining vertical and horizontal lenses, our findings illuminate how the
mechanisms that interact across levels in an institutional change process are triggered by the actions
and reactions of different groups of organizational
actors located at and between the field center and
periphery. When deviant organization-level actions
by the periphery and shifts in society-level ideology create bottom-up and top-down pressure for
institutional change, we find that middle-status actors will seek to protect the core values of the field
by mobilizing the center and periphery around a
change that brings the societal, field, and organiza-

309

tional levels back into alignment. Our focus on the

dynamics of interaction among different groups of
organizational actors across different levels over
time therefore contributes to a distinctive processbased understanding of institutional change. Our
findings show how and why microlevel institutional shifts occur, manifested in the very concrete
actions of certain field participants and the ongoing
mobilization of discourses by others.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Multilevel Processual Change Mechanisms
Barley and Tolberts (1997) conceptual model offers a starting point for considering how institutional change plays out as a bottom-up process
between the organizational level, where rules play
out in human action, and the field level, where
rules are established. Later authors extended this
model by elaborating a top-down process of institutional change created by discursive activity connecting the societal and field levels (Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy, 2004). However, the mutual
interaction between the societal and organizational
levels, and the impact this might have on the field
level, has rarely been discussed.
Society-level ideology and field-level logics. Institutional scholars have proposed a key role for
discourse in connecting the societal and field levels
(Phillips et al., 2004). Society-level ideology is
drawn down into fields through discursive activity
and in the form of institutional logics (Friedland &
Alford, 1991). We use ideology to refer to general
values, beliefs, and assumptions existing at the
level of society (Wilson, 1973) and logics to refer to
specific organizing principles at the level of the
field (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton, 2002).
Our use of the term logics is consistent with
Greenwood and Suddabys definition: Institutional logics are taken-for-granted, resilient social
prescriptions, sometimes encoded in laws, specifying the boundaries of a field, its rules of membership, and the role identities and appropriate organizational forms of its constituent communities
(2006: 28).
Shifts in societal ideology, such as those following wars (Baron, Dobbin, & Jennings, 1986) or those
concerning awareness of the natural environment
(Maguire & Hardy, 2009), create mechanisms for
changing field-level logics when they stimulate a
particular type of discursive activity described as
theorization. Theorization entails specifying a
problem and expressing and formalizing explicit
justifications for change as the solution (Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002). Societal shifts

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Academy of Management Journal

provide an opportunity for theorization that promotes ideological justifications for changing field
logics. It follows that theorization provides a mechanism for connecting society-level ideologies with
field-level logics for organizing.
Field-level logics, rules, and scripts. Barley and
Tolbert (1997) suggested that field-level logics are
carried throughout a field by rules. Rules are important carriers of logics because of the way they
constitute the reality of a field by defining different
categories of actors, their interests, and their capacity for action (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Scott,
2008). Rules encode institutional expectations
about behavior that are consistent with the fields
logic in the form of scripts. Barley and Tolbert
(1997: 100) defined scripts as observable, recurrent activities and patterns of interaction characteristic of a particular setting that mediate between
the level of the field and the level of action. Core
elements of scripts that encode rules as carriers of
logics include roles for generic categories of actors
and plots connecting typified acts, interactions,
and/or events (Barley, 1986). When field participants perform a script by playing their roles in a
plot, their behavior elicits reciprocal scripted behavior from others, and this pattern of interaction
confirms the field logic. Following Barley and Tolbert (1997), we suggest that institutionalization occurs at the intermediary level between field and
organization through the mechanism of encoding
rules, as carriers of logics, into scripts.
Organization-level action. Although scripts encode what is expected of field participants, conformity at the organizational level of action is not
assured. This is because institutions both constrain
and enable human action (Giddens, 1984). As
scripts spread throughout a field, actors translate

February

them into action by interpreting and reinterpreting

the abstract logics they encode (Czarniawska &
Joerges, 1996). Rather than passively following the
scripts, actors make and remake the connections
between scripts, rules, and logics as they flow
down from higher levels. Thus, translation is different from theorization because it relies on what
people actually do to cope with rules and not on
the arguments they develop concerning why the
rules might legitimately be changed. Translation is
the mechanism through which scripts are replicated or reinterpreted in human action at the organizational level. Over time, translation undermines scripts at the field level if they are not being
reproduced in action.
Processual mechanisms for institutional
change. Our discussion suggests that changes in
mature fields may be driven by pressures originating from different levels of an institutional system.
Table 1 summarizes the mechanisms in the change
process. At the societal level, pressure for change
arises from theorization about shifting ideologies
and their implications for field-level logics, which
are carried by rules and encode scripts for patterning human behavior. At the organizational level,
pressure for institutional change arises as organizations translate scripts into action inconsistent with
the rule. This results in new patterns of human
action that, over time, revise the original script and
may lead to new rules institutionalized at the field
level. A change in rules is an observable indicator
of an institutional change process involving a shift
in field logics (Scott, 2008). Although the literature
suggests the possibility of top-down theorization
and bottom-up revision of scripts in institutional
change, it has not considered how their mutual
interaction and impact at the field level might be

TABLE 1
Summary of Processual Mechanisms
Processual
Mechanism
(a) Theorization

(b) Encoding

(c) Translating

(d) Revision

(e) Institutionalization

Description
The rendering of societal ideologies into field-level
logics by specifying problems and justifying
solutions
The creation of scripts as observable recurrent
activities and patterns of interactions that
conform to rules that carry logics
The interpretation and reinterpretation of scripts,
which encode rules as carriers of logics, through
human/organizational action
Patterns of behavior and interactions that deviate
from institutional expectations and create new
scripts
The formalization of a new rule to reflect a change
in the field logic and scripts for action

Conceptual Linkages

Levels

Ideology Logic

Societal Field

Logic Rules Script

Field

Script Action

Field Organizational

Action Script

Organizational Field

Script Logic Rule

Field

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Wright and Zammuto

triggered by different groups of organizational

actors.
Organizational Actors, Field Positions,
and the Change Process
The multilevel processual mechanisms just discussed point to how forces above and below a field
create pressure for institutional change. In other
research, fields have been conceptualized as political arenas (Brint & Karabel, 1991) involving structured systems of social positions (Bourdieu, 1989).
Struggles for power and privilege occur between
actors located at a fields center and its periphery.
Shils (1961) noted center and periphery are not
geographical terms but rather, reflect location with
respect to a central value system and its embodiment in rules and authority. He argued that commitment to central values and respect for the authority of rules and rule makers weakens with
movement from center to periphery (Shils, 1961).
Institutional scholars have argued that actors located at the periphery of a field are the least committed to the fields logic and are the most disadvantaged by that logic. Peripheral actors who
associate their disadvantaged position with the prevailing field logic have an incentive to take actions
that draw down an alternative logic from the societal level (Hensmans, 2003; Leblebici et al., 1991).
Alternatively, elite actors located at field center are
highly embedded and are the most advantaged by
the prevailing logic. Although their interests are
vested in preserving the status quo, they nevertheless possess sufficient resources and power to initiate changes intended to sustain or improve their
advantage (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Rao et al.,
2003; Sherer & Lee, 2002).
Yet although this literature offers some insight
into how different groups of organizational actors
play a role in the change process, researcher attention has focused on two locations only, the center
and the periphery. Missing from the explanation is
consideration of if and how actors located between
the center and periphery take actions that influence
field change. Extant literature in sociology, which
has not been considered previously in explanations
of institutional change, suggests that the group of
actors located between the center and periphery of
a field may play an important role in reproducing
field logic. This literature distinguishes among actors with high status, actors with low status, and
actors in between, defined as middle-status actors
(Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001). Conformity to institutional rules and scripts has been shown to be
higher for middle-status actors than for high- and
low-status actors (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001).

311

Nonconformity damages the social ranking of middle-status actors, whereas high-status actors have
minimal risk of losing legitimacy, and low-status
actors face inconsequential penalties versus potential reward. However, no research has examined
whether and how interactions between these
groups shapes an institutional change process over
time in a mature organizational field.
In this section, we outlined a theoretical background to our research question: What role do different groups of organizational actors play at different levels in a multilevel institutional change
process over time? To ground our answer, we derived from the extant literature on institutional
change a set of mechanisms connecting societylevel ideology with field-level logics, rules, and
scripts and organization-level action. We then distinguished the field locations of center, periphery,
and in-between and considered the incentives for
actors positioned at each location to take actions to
reproduce or change the field logic. We turn now to
the methods we used to investigate our research
question.

METHODS
Case Selection
First-Class County Cricket (hereafter, County
Cricket) offered a compelling case for investigating
our research question. Unlike U.S. major league
sports, which have a history of profit-seeking team
owners satisfying mass market demand for spectator sports, First-Class County Cricket clubs (hereafter, Counties) produced County Championship
matches for the aesthetic pleasure of socially elite
club members (Cardus, 1952). A field logic of
cricket-as-art emerged in Victorian England and
was carried by rules for employing cricketers as
labor resources. A classification rule distinguished
between amateur and professional cricketers, and a
qualification rule defined that cricketers could be
employed only by their geographic county of birth
or long-term residence. These rules were changed
in 1962 and 1967 through movement toward a
cricket-as-business logic.
In County Cricket, rules are the product of collaborative governance. From 1787 to 1969, a London-based private members club, the Marylebone
Cricket Club (MCC), governed English cricket. In
1904, the MCC established the Advisory County
Cricket Committee (ACCC) to administer the
County game. The ACCC comprised representatives from MCC and each of the 17 first-class Counties. The MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, which met
fortnightly, and the MCC secretariat carried out the

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Academy of Management Journal

work of cricket administration on behalf of the

Counties. County proposals for rule changes, accompanied by a memorandum of justification, were
submitted to the MCC secretary for inclusion on the
agenda for the next ACCC meeting, held twice
yearly. The agenda and memorandums were then
circulated to Counties, which submitted any
amendments two weeks before the scheduled meeting. The MCC Cricket Sub-Committee also reviewed the ACCC agenda. ACCC meetings were
chaired by the president of MCC, recorded in minutes by the MCC secretary, and attended by representatives of the MCC Cricket Sub-Committee as
well as the Counties. Any rule change required
support of a two-third majority of County representatives and confirmation by the MCC committee.
Collaborative governance aided our data collection
because a formal procedure existed for documenting interactions between the organizational and
field levels.
Data Collection
The MCC gave access to its private library and
archives to the first author. The MCC archivisthistorian assisted with identification of relevant
archival data. Data on crickets early history of field
formation were sourced from the Wisden Cricketers Almanack (published annually since 1864 and
containing articles on English and international
cricket and abridged minutes of governance meetings), 56 player and administrator biographies and
anthologies of poetry and stories, and 49 scholarly
books and articles written by sociologists and
sports historiographers. For the period 1919 67, a
total of 949 documents were identified as relevant
to the institutional change process: minutes of 354
meetings, 13 agendas, 26 reports, 50 memoranda,
195 questionnaires, 156 newspaper clippings, 146
letters of correspondence, and 9 other documents
such as speeches. Other sources included the
Cricketer, a magazine published annually since
1921. In the discussion that follows, we identify
material from these archival documents with numerical superscripts,1 which link to entries in the
Appendix.
In keeping with other institutional studies
(Greenwood et al., 2002; Rao et al., 2003), a chronology of key events involving institutional formation and change was reconstructed from books
written by cricket historians, the Wisden Almanack, and minutes of meetings. This led to the
demarcation of three stages of institutional formation and change: (1) field formation and maturation, in which classification and qualification rules
were established as carriers of a logic of cricket-as-

February

art; (2) the period 1936 62, when the classification

rule 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 of
field formation, we assembled a data set from the
archival sources for this period by writing summary notes and extracting quotes relevant to British
ideology at the societal level; the establishment of
collaborative governance mechanisms, logics,
rules, and scripts at the field level of County Cricket; and the establishment of County clubs at the
organizational level. The data set comprised 267
single-spaced pages of text, typed in an electronic
file. Text segments were then hand-coded according to (1) what? (logic, rule, script, or action); (2)
where? (societal, field, or organizational level); (3)
when? (what point in time?); and (4) who? (which
clubs or committees?). As coding progressed following procedures recommended for qualitative researchers (Eisenhardt, 1989; Miles & Huberman,
1994), it emerged that the what at the societal
level was social class ideology and the what at
the field level was a cricket-as-art logic, which developed in opposition to a cricket-as-business
logic. Table 2 summarizes the major oppositions,
which are elaborated in the first stage of analysis.
An amateur script assigning a particular style of
performance (plot) to a particular type of cricketer
(role) also emerged in this period. The veracity of
our interpretation of the emergence of a cricket-asart logic and an amateur script was confirmed by
(1) viewing of artwork and artifacts displayed in the
museum at Lords Cricket Ground and at the house
of a private collector and (2) consultation with the
archivist-historian, the collector, and two museum
guides.
Data analysis then moved on to the two time
periods in which rule changes indicated an institutional change process had occurred. Analysis began by classifying Counties according to their location at the fields center, periphery, and in-between
at the end of field formation and maturation, which
we define as the end of 1935, when the MCC appointed its first commission to examine the field.
Field location classification was based on two summary measures derived from Shils (1961): relative
closeness to the fields central value systemin
our case, the logic of cricket-as-artand relative
closeness to the fields rule-making authority.
Criteria for the former measure included number
of years competing in the Championship, designation as a cricket ground able to host international Test matches, and historical Champion-

2013

Wright and Zammuto

313

TABLE 2
Oppositions between Logics of Cricket-as-Art and Cricket-as-Business
Dimensions
Field structure
Capital prioritized (Bourdieu, 1993)
Emphasis on cricket as a cultural
product
Most valued consumers
Criteria for decision making (March
& Olsen, 1984)
Primary source of legitimacy
(Suchman, 1995)
Structures for interorganizational
relationships
Archetypes for sporting
competition
Archetypes for organizational
structures

Archetypes for acquisition of labor

resources
Most valued labor resources
Formal rules for employment of
labor resources

Logic of Cricket-as-Art

Logic of Cricket-as-Business

Field of Restricted Production

Symbolic capital
Aesthetic

Field of Large Scale Production

Economic capital
Utilitarian

County members
Appropriateness

Mass market (spectators paying at the gate)

Consequences

Moral

Pragmatic

Hierarchy
Historically specified
Traditional Championship
Long battles (three-day matches)
Traditional county boundaries
Member-owned and financed clubs
Decision-making power vested with
committees
Cartel of employers

Market
Individually controlled
Modern cups and leagues
Short contests (limits on each teams innings)
Customer segments
Structures appropriate for maximizing returns
Decision-making power vested with owners of
resources
Labor as free agents

Amateurs valued on social class

Oppositional classification
Naturalized qualification

Cricketers valued on merit

Universal classification
Instant qualification

ship success, and criteria for the latter included

convenience of traveling to London for committee
meetings and relationships with MCC. As we explain below, these criteria were important in determining the Counties status, power, and resources.
Applying these criteria allowed us to give each
County Cricket Club a summary rating as high,
medium, or low for its closeness to the fields
central value system and a summary rating as
high, medium, or low for its closeness to the
fields rule-making authority. Three combinations
only of the two measures emerged from our data:
high-high, medium-medium, and low-low. The use
of Shilss two measures to determine field location
is likely to produce more varied combinations in
fields with larger numbers of participants. However, our data set comprised only 17 Counties that
self-governed their field through committees, as described earlier. Collaborative governance meant
that County representation on and proximity to the
fields hierarchy of committees provided a mechanism for affirming and disseminating values.
Therefore, it was not unexpected to find that a
County that was close to the fields central values
was also close to the rule-making authority.
Six Counties were rated high on both closeness to
the fields central value system and rule-making
authority; six Counties were rated medium on both
measures; and five Counties were rated low on both
measures. We confirmed the veracity of our criteria
and ratings through independent discussions with

the MCC archivist-historian and with a cricket expert who assists authors with historical fact checking. Table 3 summarizes our classifications of the
field positions of Counties.
We labeled the six Counties that were classified
as closest to the fields central value system and
authority structures as central elites. As shown in
Table 3, central elites comprised the founding
Championship competitors, with Kent and Surrey
playing their first match in 1840. They enjoyed a
large and loyal membership with traditional values
and, as home to four of the six Test grounds, gained
status from staging international matches. A central
elite won the Championship on all but three occasions from 1890 to 1935.
Disciples of the cricket-as-art logic and traditional guardians of the field, central elites gained
power through their relationships with MCC. Key
amateurs and administrators of all Counties were
members of MCC, but central elites were more
likely to hold positions on the MCC Cricket SubCommittee and/or be MCC office bearers. Middlesex, Surrey, and Hampshire dominated the number
of representatives and office bearers. With the exception of the two northern Counties, central elites
were located in close proximity to London, which
facilitated committee representation by reducing
the burden of traveling to meetings. There was a
high level of informal interaction between central
elites and MCC (for example, we found letters inviting central elites to meet at private homes to

Category

Central elite
Central elite
Central elite
Central elite
Central elite
Central elite
Peripheral elite
Peripheral elite
Peripheral elite
Peripheral elite
Peripheral elite
Peripheral elite
Marginal player
Marginal player
Marginal player
Marginal player
Marginal player

County Club

Surrey
Yorkshire
Middlesex
Kent
Hampshire
Lancashire
Sussex
Nottinghamshire
Gloucestershire
Somerset
Warwickshire
Essex
Derbyshire
Leicestershire
Worcestershire
Northamptonshire
Glamorgan

1864
1864
1864
1864
1864
1865
1864
1864
1870
1891
1895
1895
1895
1895
1899
1905
1921

First Year in
Championship
London
North
London
South-East
South
North
South-East
Midlands
West
South-West
North-West
South-East
North
Midlands
North-West
Midlands
Wales

Location
(Relative to London)

X
X
X

Test
Ground
7
18
3
4
0
7
0
2
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0

First:
18901935
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
5
6
3

Last:
192135

Championship
Performance

Classification of Positional Location in the Field Pre-1935

TABLE 3
Descriptive Data on Individual County Clubs

5%
3%
8%
2%
13%
4%
8%
27%
44%
52%
8%
18%
46%
19%
27%
84%
56%

Net Cricket Income

(Five-Year Average:
195660)

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Supporters
Club

8
11
2
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
2
0
1

0
0
0
0
0
0
1
6
2
4
0
1
1
6
0
5
0

Last:
193667

Championship
Performance
First:
193667

Performance 193667

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Wright and Zammuto

discuss cricket matters2 and private correspondence about actions of marginal players (see below)
undermining central elites).3
We labeled the six Counties that had a medium
level of closeness to the fields central value system
and authority structures as peripheral elites. As
shown in Table 3, this group included both founding Championship competitors and later entrants.
Although their memberships were loyal and relatively sizable, and two peripheral elites hosted Test
grounds, membership in these Counties lacked the
social status of membership in a central elite club.
Peripheral elites had solid representation on the
MCC Committee and some representation on the
MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, with Sussex a strong
voice. Clustering around the south, west and lower
north of England, they found London relatively
accessible for meetings.
Finally, we labeled the five Counties that had the
lowest level of closeness to the fields value system
and authority structure as marginal players. We
borrow the term from Scott to represent actors
who are at the periphery of a field (2008: 102).
This group joined the Championship after the MCC
officially consecrated it as first class in 1894.
Marginal players had small memberships and limited representation on the committees of MCC.
They were geographically and culturally distant
from London; Glamorgan, located in Wales, was
especially so (the archives contained correspondence indicating travel to meetings posed a time
and financial burden).4 No marginal players staged
Test matches, and a marginal player always finished in last place and never won a Championship
during our classification period.
Having classified the field location of each
County at the end of 1935, when the field had
formed and matured, we analyzed the change process involving the classification rule from 1936 to
1962 (see Wright, 2009b). Reading iteratively
within and between the documents, we traced (1)
chains of arguments used to challenge or defend
the status quo by different committee members,
acting as representatives of individual County interests, and by different committees, acting as representatives of collective field interests (theorizations); (2) actions taken by individual Counties to
acquire financial and human resources, such as
applications to register cricketers, payments to
cricketers, and establishment of new sources of finance (translations); and formal passage of new
rules (institutionalization). As segments of text
were hand-coded for mechanisms and levels, patterns emerged that refined our coding and revealed

315

mechanisms for the encoding and revision of

scripts. Because a text segment was coded as referencing a field script when it assigned a particular
style of performance (plot) to a particular type of
cricketer (role), shifts in plots and/or roles became
apparent over time. As discussed later, we labeled
this mechanism of script revision displacement.
When coding was completed, we iterated between
what, where, when and who by asking how these
were connected. This led to second-order insights
about the interplay between societal, field, and organizational levels in the process of institutional
change.
To address our research question on the role of
different groups of organizational actors in the
change process, we extracted 246 statements attributed to individual County representatives from the
minutes, memorandums, and reports of County
Crickets subcommittees and committees relevant
to amateur status. Each statement was made in response to the possibility of changing the classification rule by removing amateur status and recategorizing all players as cricketers. We coded
statements according to whether they expressed
support for, or rejection of, the existing classification rule and the extent to which the County representative justified support or rejection through
logics, scripts, societal ideology, and/or organizational practices following Elsbach and Kramers
(1996) method of mapping evidential patterns in
organizational statements.
Finally, we repeated the coding procedures to
analyze the role of individual Counties in the
change process for the qualification rule. We analyzed the minutes of meetings, memorandums, reports, and other documents in which Counties proposed and contested a rule change regarding the
qualification of cricketers. A total of 173 statements
were extracted from archival documents and coded
for their expression of rules, logics, scripts, societal
ideology, and organizational action.
Our method conforms to Lincoln and Gubas (2000)
principles of methodological and interpretative rigor.
Interpretations were derived from multiple documents, increasing confirmability through triangulation (Jick, 1979). Confirmability was enhanced by
discussing emergent insights with the MCC archivisthistorian and other experts. Finally, the process we
uncovered was confirmed, repeating over two change
cycles. In the next section, we present the findings of
our three stages of analysis. As is appropriate in historical archival research, we use extensive endnotes,
presented in the Appendix, to provide full historical
documentation (Hill, 1993).

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Academy of Management Journal

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE PROCESSES IN

COUNTY CRICKET
Stage 1: Formation of the Field of County Cricket
The first cricket matches were staged as public
entertainment in England in the 1700s, when social
class hierarchies ordered postfeudal society (Birley, 2000). During visits to their country estates, the
nobility and gentry assembled cricket teams, including servants, to compete for wagers (Altham,
1962). As interest grew in this glorious, manly
British game,5 codification of the laws of cricket
and emergence of rudimentary club structures followed.6 By 1800, the MCC, boasting membership of
landed aristocrats, became the law-making authority and mother of cricket.7 Cricket production
remained informal until the field was institutionalized in the Victorian era, and by common consent gained the appellation noble,8 in response to
societal and organizational pressures.
At the societal level, the Industrial Revolution
had spawned a middle class of businessmen, civil
servants, and other professionals who aspired to
position themselves closer to the upper classes of
landed aristocracy and further from working class
laborers in factories and mines. They in part
achieved this repositioning by an identity of moral
character developed through education, religion,
and organized sports (Mangan, 1981). The Church
of England promoted cricket as a manly recreation that calls into requisition all the cardinal
virtues . . . fortitude, patience, self-denial.9 It was
also included in the curriculum of elite schools and
universities to foster sportsmanship and leadership, as the discipline and reliance on one another
which it teaches is so valuable.10 Learning to
Play up! play up! and play the game!11 prepared
schoolboys for their future roles in empire. When
alumni traveled throughout the colonies, they used
cricket to diffuse ideas about Anglo-Saxon character (Kaufman & Patterson, 2005): The game of
cricket, philosophically considered, is a standing
panegyric on the English character: none but an
orderly and sensible race of people would so amuse
themselves.9
At the organizational level, middle-class aspirants sought membership in the MCC and emerging
elite cricket clubs organized around the geographic
unit of a county.6 Clubs were managed by elected
committees; landowners and aristocrats took on
presidential roles, and military officers, clergy, and
professionals performed administrative duties
(Marqusee, 2005). Clubs banned wagering and
staged cricket matches, untainted by vulgarity or
crudity,8 to entertain members. Each match was
played over three days by two teams of 11 players

February

each. One team batted while the opposing team

bowled and fielded the ball. Pairs of batsmen tried
to score runs by hitting the ball and running from
one end of the batting pitch to the other. The bowling team sought to dismiss each batsman by taking
his wicket in a variety of ways. The winner was the
team with the most runs after each team had batted
twice. A draw was declared if no team was dismissed twice in the three days allocated for
the match.
Teams were composed of amateurs from the upper and aspirational middle classes, who were reimbursed only for expenses, and working class professionals who received salaries. Because amateurs
received coaching at elite schools and universities
where cricket was character training,10, 12 the amateur style of play differed visibly from that of
professionals. In the language of scripts (Barley,
1986), because cricketers titled as amateurs played
cricket for pleasure as an expression of their moral
character (role), they played in an exuberant and
aesthetic style (plot). The amateur wielded the
willow of the bat as great artists use fiddles, paint
brushes, pianos,13 playing strokes that turned the
old one-stringed instrument into a many chorded
lyre.14 Professionals performed an oppositional
script: because their livelihood depended on
cricket performance (role), the professional adopted a workmanlike defensive style motivated by
results (plot). Whereas for amateurs, cricket was a
dance with a bat in your hand,15 professionals
avoided using their bat for anything that never
were a business stroke.16
Interaction of class-based values at the societal
level and club production of scripted cricketing
performances at the organizational level drove formation of a new field around a logic of cricket-asart (Wright, 2009a). The field met Bourdieus (1993)
description of a field of restricted cultural production,a type of field that (1) produces cultural goods
for a public of producers of cultural goods, such as
high-brow art being produced for other artists; (2)
evaluates products using legitimacy criteria developed by the field itself; and (3) prioritizes the accumulation of symbolic capital over economic capital. County members, as owners of clubs, produced
cricket as a cultural product for themselves as producing consumers and were educated to appreciate
the esthetics of a three-day match and the amateur
script. Despite some cross-subsidization of costs by
gate spectators from the working class, club members enjoyed substantial autonomy to develop nonmarket criteria for cricket production. Embracing a
logic of cricket-as-art, members evaluated cricket as
a dramatic spectacle, which belongs with the the-

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Wright and Zammuto

atre, ballet, opera and the dance17 (James, 2005:

258).
Formal governance of the field of restricted cultural production was introduced by MCC from
1873 to 1894 to consecrate (Bourdieu, 1993: 78)
authentic first-class cricket and cricketers. Clubs
became consecrated as First-Class Counties by
playing a minimum number of three-day matches
against MCC and other Counties (Bowen, 1970).
First-class cricketers were consecrated through
classification and qualification rules. The classification rule created amateur and professional as
an oppositional pair of titles and publicly affirmed
the superior status of the amateur: No gentleman
ought to make a profit by his services in the cricket
field.18 A logic of cricket-as-art requires cricketers
able to perform as artists, and the rule encoded a
script in which cricketers titled as amateurs
wielded the willow in a style distinctive to, and
valued in, the field of restricted cultural production: It stands to reason that cricket dominated by
amateurs must be livelier than cricket in which
professionals set the tone.19 We label this the titled amateur script.
In turn, the qualification rule specified that cricketers could play either for their county of birth or of
two-year residence but could not play for multiple
Counties in a single season.18 By mandating that
labor resources be naturalized into the soil of a
County, this rule affirmed the pastoral roots of the
upper classes as the appropriate definition for belonging in the field of restricted cultural production and precluded market-based definitions of belonging as a tradable commodity. Counties were
expected to produce attractive Championship
cricket using an indigenous supply of amateurs
and, if necessary, naturalized professionals. Cricketers born outside of the United Kingdom, labeled
overseas players, could belong in County Cricket
only after being naturalized.
Formalization of governance structures and rules
of oppositional classification and naturalized qualification ensured that the field remained distinct
from, and hierarchically superior to, other forms of
cricket production and other commercial sports,
such as football. County Cricket must not be tampered with to please people who think it can have
the concentrated excitement of an hour and a halfs
football,20 for County Clubs will then steadily
deteriorate into mere firms, like Football League
Clubs, who simply provide public entertainments
by the medium of troupes of paid players.21 Fields
of restricted cultural production exist in opposition
to fields of large-scale production, which produce
cultural products for the public at large (Bourdieu,
1993). Opposing the field of restricted cultural pro-

317

duction of County Cricket was the field of largescale cultural production of league cricket clubs,
emerging in the industrial areas of Northern England in the 1880s. Leagues produced Saturday
matches, placing time limits on each batting team,
to satisfy working class demand for spectator sports
of short duration. The County Cricket field of restricted cultural production saw itself as a cult
and a philosophy inexplicable to the profanum vulgus . . . and the merchant minded22 represented by
the field of large-scale cultural production.
Stage 2: Changing the Classification
Rule, 193662
After forming as a field of restricted cultural production of cricket-as-art, Counties faced declining
revenue as crowds fell during the Great Depression
and, because fewer cricketers could afford to play
as amateurs, rising labor costs for professionals.
Counties avoided bankruptcy through donations
from benefactors and a share of profits from Test
cricket. Conformity to the cricket-as-art logic undermined the viability of marginal players, who
faced the dual problems of low membership and an
inadequate stock of naturalized cricketers. At the
end of 1935, MCC appointed a commission to examine the County game. Affirming the need to preserve the art and character of the game,23 the
commissions (1937) report concluded the presence
of amateurs was desirable for obvious reasons.23
To reduce delay in qualifying amateurs, the commission recommended special registration for exceptional cases23 of cricketers not naturalized
through birth or residence. Introduced in 1939, this
rule assisted Counties to get going again24 in
1946 after WWII depleted stocks of healthy
cricketers.
Translating and scripting at the organizational
level. Postwar commitment to cricket-as-art at the
field level intensified pressures on marginal players for financial and human resources. They responded to the contradiction between field legitimacy and organizational efficiency by translating
the field logic in three ways. First, marginal players
raised funds by imitating an organizational form
visible in football and league cricket, known as
supporters clubs (Table 3). Generating income
from lotteries and gambling pools, supporters
clubs officially had no ties25 to a cricket club and
stuck to the old formula to help and not hinder.25
By decoupling, marginal players showed symbolic
conformity to the field of restricted cultural production logic while achieving efficiency by subsidizing cricket production through a cricket-as-business organizational form. Peripheral elites followed

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Academy of Management Journal

by introducing their own supporters clubs. From

1956 to 1960, the average ratio of annual income
from supporters clubs to normal cricket income
was 0.94 for marginal players, 0.23 for peripheral
elites and zero for central elites.26
Second, marginal players translated the qualification rules so as to improve their access to professional cricketers. Marginal players with small populations and supporters clubs had both the motive
for and financial capacity to engage in translation.
For example, Northamptonshire, cross-subsidized
by a 61,000 member supporters club, interpreted
special registration as a routine method of qualifying nonnaturalized professionals and registered
four times as many cricketers as other Counties in
the five years prior to 1949. Marginal players made
the same number of applications for special registration in the 1949 and 1950 seasons as peripheral
and central elites combined, with central elites submitting only a third as many applications as marginal players.27 To keep marginal players in check,
peripheral and central elites used the ACCC to
place quotas on a Countys specially registered
players in 1951 and prescribed special registration
as only an alternative to qualification by residence
[that] should not be regarded as the normal method
of qualification.24
Moreover, central and peripheral elites sought to
clear up any doubt28 as to what constituted legitimate recruitment of overseas-born professionals.
The ACCC ruled that three years residency in the
United Kingdom was required for special registration. Registration was forfeited if cricketers played
in any other first-class competitions, including
matches representing their home countries. However, since marginal players continued to face a
shortage of indigenous cricketers, they translated
the rule into action by importing overseas cricketers willing to qualify by residence because no
country, except England, plays sufficient First
Class Cricket, either at home or on tours, to support
professionalism.29 Thus, marginal players translated overseas players as resources to be naturalized after active importing, rather than as already
naturalized resources employed serendipitously.
Because this translation contradicted traditional
belonging to a field of restricted cultural production, central and peripheral elites defined importing (as) a real problem30 and used the ACCC to
limit Counties to a quota of two overseas players in
1957. In the four years from 1957 to 1960, salaries
paid to professionals constituted 43 percent of total
expenses for marginal players, 35 percent for peripheral elites, and 28 percent for central elites.31
Third, marginal players translated the classification rule to improve access to amateurs. To sustain

February

itself as a field of restricted cultural production,

County Cricket required a supply of amateurs able
to perform the titled amateur script. Yet two world
wars had depleted cricketer stocks, and socioeconomic change had reduced the number of independently wealthy individuals willing to play as amateurs. The classification rule allowed amateurs to
be refunded out-of-pocket expenses only. However,
when cricketers sought payment for loss of earnings without forfeiting the social status of an amateur title,29 marginal players and, to a lesser extent, peripheral elites translated the rule by
reimbursing phony32 expenses and paying amateurs for administrative duties never performed.
From 1958 to 1962, no central elite made payments
to amateurs employed in administrative positions,
whereas every marginal player and half the peripheral elites did so.33 Four marginal players and one
peripheral elite were investigated for what central
elites and other peripheral elites considered excessive payments of amateur expenses34 and hypocrisies34 of paying cricketers for nominal administrative duties, including as a public relations
officer35 with a supporters club. Marginal players
justified paying key amateurs for their time as a
means of preserving the leadership, drive and enterprise traditionally associated with the amateur.36 Marginal players, arguing MCC was interfering too much in their domestic affairs,37
resisted field attempts to police financial
arrangements.
Over time, translation of the classification rules
caused an observable disconnection between role
and plot in the performance of the titled amateur
script vis--vis the professional script. Regarding
the role, field participants generally observed that
instead of playing cricket for pleasure not profit,
some titled amateurs retained their amateur status
title while continuing to derive their income either
wholly or in part from the game38 and some
amateurs were far better paid than the professionals.39 Regarding the plot, they also observed that
only some cricketers titled as amateurs wielded the
willow in the exuberant amateur style, while others
performed the defensive, results-oriented plot of
the professional. The latter group steadfastly refused to have a bang irrespective of the state of
the game.40 Only the genuine amateur41, 39, 42 or
true amateur43, 44, 45, 46 wielded the willow for
pleasure. The amateur plot remained unquestioned by the field as of great value to the
game47 because it carried the field of restricted
cultural production logic of cricket-as-art. In contrast, the role of titled amateur was problematic
because the observable patterns of behavior disputed causality between possessing the title of am-

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ateur and wielding the willow. A title no longer

drove the plot of the amateur script. The titled
amateur role was displaced in the new script,
which we label the genuine amateur script: genuine amateurs (role) play in an aesthetic and exuberant style (plot).
Societal change, shifting logics, and a new
classification rule. Translation and script displacement caused bottom-up pressure for institutional change. At the same time, theorization of
societal change created top-down pressure. Two
wars and decline of empire accelerated progression
from class-based hierarchization toward egalitarianism as the legitimate organizing principle for
English society. Shared sacrifice and military efforts organized on merit had eroded the gap between the working and middle classes (Holt, 1993).
As a new collective identity was forged, class distinctions were perceived as pretentious. Progression toward egalitarianism undermined cricket as a
field of restricted cultural production, an identity
that requires producers able to produce cricket as
art and consumers cultivated to appreciate it
(Bourdieu, 1993).
The producing aspect of this field of restricted
cultural production was undermined by overreliance on professional labor, an outcome of marginal
player translation in response to the shortage of
amateurs from Englands shrinking upper class. In
1936, 48 percent of cricketers who played at least
one County Championship match were classified
as amateurs. In all Counties, these amateurs played
substantially fewer Championship matches than
did professionals. In Championship matches
played during the 1936 season, amateurs represented 21.3 percent of the labor force of central
elites; 23.2 percent for peripheral elites; and 20.8
percent for marginal players.48 By 1960, the number of amateurs playing at least one Championship
match had fallen from 175 amateurs in 1936 to 64
in 1960, and the number of professionals rose from
191 to 262. The decline in amateurs was most pronounced for marginal players. In Championship
matches played during the 1960 season, amateurs
represented only 6.4 percent of the labor force of
marginal players. In contrast, amateurs represented
15.1 and 20.8 percent of the labor forces of central
elites and peripheral elites respectively, achieved
primarily through a significant increase in the average number of Championship matches played by
each amateur compared to the 1936 season. With
fewer cricketers performing the amateur plot, central elites noted County Cricket developed a tendency to be less artistic, less dramatic and perhaps
less moral.49 The approach of the modern crick-

319

eter to batting50 was unattractive, lacking positive fight between bat and ball.51
Societal progression toward egalitarianism also
eroded the consuming aspect of crickets field of
restricted cultural production by shrinking the base
of cultivated consumers who valued the artistry of
the Championship. For gate spectators, a threeday cricket match is a long drawn-out affair, which,
in the modern world, lacks the element of excitement which so many competitive activities provide.51 Although central elites believed members
remained the true cricket enthusiast52 and
should always constitute the basis of a Countys
economy,53 vulnerable marginal players and peripheral elites introduced supporters clubs. This
raised criticism from the MCC and central elites
stating that it was wrong for County cricket to be
kept alive by artificial means54 and spawned field
inquiries in 1957 and 1960 61 to consider how to
grow interest and active support55 for cricket.
The latter inquiry reported that after excluding
non-normal56 income from supporters clubs,
only about six clubs could hope to break even57
(see Table 3).
The ACCC devised a solution to appeal to the
modern public who wanted entertainment
value,58 rather than aesthetic edification, from
watching cricket. In 1963 they introduced a KnockOut Cup with matches completed in a single day.
The Cup was an outcome of an institutional change
process that moved the field of restricted cultural
productions anchor in response to societal and
organizational pressures. It did not represent art
being usurped by business as the core logic for the
field (Wright & Zammuto, 2013). Rather, the central
elites objective in agreeing to a cup, decoupled
from the proper57 contest of the three-day Championship, was to ensure survival of the field of
restricted cultural production by increasing spectator appeal49 without causing a set-back in
prestige.56
The impact of Englands growing egalitarianism
on the producing and consuming aspects of the
cricket field of restricted cultural production was
eventually carried through to a change in the classification rule. The shift from hierarchical to egalitarian ideologies of social class was drawn down
into the field by peripheral elites and marginal
players who questioned the snob value of amateur
status58 and the insulting and derogatory comment on modern professionals59 implied an oppositional classification. This theorization coming
down from the societal level aligned with the genuine amateur script coming up from organizational
action. Theorization that in this democratic age a
true amateur should not require the benefits of

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Academy of Management Journal

distinction to be publicly known59 was supported

by scripting in which an alteration in the name of
a cricketer would not in any way alter his attitude
to the game.39 Thus, the amateur plot core to the
field of restricted cultural production was preserved while the socially unpalatable oppositional
classification was removed.
We found that when a subcommittee of ACCC
was first set up to consider a rule change in 1957,
central elites were strongly supportive of retaining
amateur status because they took for granted the
cricket-as-art logic and valued social class distinctions and the titled amateur script. Marginal players, too, were initially supportive of retaining oppositional classification, perceiving the field rule to
exist independently of their own practice of financially compensating cricketers who wanted to play
as amateurs. Marginal players sought to retain amateurs as symbols of the cricket-as-art logic without
believing in the substance of that logic. Peripheral
elites challenged the capacity to separate symbol
from substance. For peripheral elites, if the amateur
title was to be retained, then the rule should be
tightened to prevent payment of amateurs; otherwise oppositional classification made no sense and
should be abandoned. Thus, peripheral elites were
sufficiently embedded in the cricket-as-art logic for
payment of amateurs to be recognized as contradictory but not so embedded they took the existence of
the rule for granted. They were the first group of
Counties to conceive that it was possible for the
plot of the amateur script to be preserved without
the amateur title.
Over time, marginal players joined peripheral
elites in rejecting the classification rule. This occurred after the MCC set up a standing committee
in 1958, comprising representatives from itself and
from central and peripheral elites, to monitor payments made to amateurs. When the committee
acted on four doubtful cases involving marginal
players, they questioned whether retaining amateur
status was worth the loss of financial autonomy. As
the representative for one marginal player complained, The inference when you analyse it really
is that this Committee who do not appear to know
the ramifications of our cricket organization are
telling me that I do not know my job. I do not think
they have the right to do that.60 Marginal players
then supported peripheral elites in seeking an egalitarian rule change that would not impede their use
of practices consistent with a cricket-as-business
logic at the organizational level. The central elites
were never supportive of the rule change because it
undermined the cricket-as-art logic at the core of
their identity and power base. However, they reconciled its inevitability in an egalitarian society

February

with preservation of the amateur plot through the

genuine amateur script.
The outcome of alignment between societal,
field, and organizational pressures in the institutional change process was a new field rule in which
the oppositional classification of amateur and professional was replaced with the universal classification cricketer. The new rule, legislated at the
end of 1962, stated, All players in First-Class
County Cricket shall in future be called cricketers
and that any financial arrangements made with
them will be the sole concern of their respective
Counties.44 Timed to coincide with the start of the
Knock-Out Cup, the new rule was a carrier of a field
logic in which the boundary between cricket-as-art
and cricket-as-business was less distinct. The
boundary achieved through qualification rules remained intact, with the ACCC affirming the need
for cricketers to be naturalized, albeit with residential qualification reduced to two years to appease
overseas cricket boards.
Stage 3: Changing the Qualification
Rule, 196267
Having secured a change in the classification
rule, peripheral elites sought to further the institutional change process by proposing a change in the
qualification rule. Our coding revealed that peripheral elites put forward proposals to the ACCC in
1962, 1963, and 1964 to permit employment of
overseas players not naturalized through residence.
Two Counties proposed the change, Nottinghamshire and Gloucestershire. Both had been elite
members when the field first emerged in the Victorian era and aspired to improve their current field
position by employing overseas stars61 as crowd
pullers.62
Kept afloat by revenue from supporters clubs but
facing declining gates at Championship matches
due to poor performances, Nottinghamshire and
Gloucestershire had observed the impact of worldclass overseas players on attendances in Australian
domestic cricket and league cricket in the U.K.
Although both Counties employed some naturalized overseas cricketers, the existing rule limited
recruitment of world-class cricketers, who were unwilling to sit out two years of cricket to establish
residential qualification. The proposed rule change
carried a shift from a relatively pure field of restricted cultural production to one in which the
dominant cricket-as-art logic was forced to incorporate cricket-as-business practices for survival.
This shift had begun with the change in the amateur classification rule, producing a less elitist and
more decentralized labor market for cricketers, and

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Wright and Zammuto

with the Knock-Out Cup innovation, signaling central elite acceptance of the necessity of adopting
some practices underpinned by a cricket-as-business logic to preserve the cricket-as-art logic at the
core of the weakened field of restricted cultural
production.
Central elites contested the appropriateness of
further crowd-pulling business practices. On each
occasion in 1962, 1963, and 1964 when peripheral
elites proposed instantly qualified overseas players, central elites responded by using control of the
MCC Cricket Sub-Committee and Registration
Committee to circulate antichange memorandums
to all Counties. Change, they predicted, would lead
to auctions in which overseas stars, who had
no loyalty to an adopted County, agreed to play for
the highest bidder.63, 64, 65 The implication was
the rule would only be of advantage to the wealthy
Counties64 able to afford the worlds best cricketers by siphoning funds from supporters clubs. By
1960, two marginal players were earning more income from their supporters clubs than two central
elites were earning from their entire cricket operations.66 Concerned they would lose their dominant
field position, for three years central elites prescribed boundaries around how far the cricket-asbusiness logic could penetrate the field of restricted
cultural production by banning nonnaturalized
overseas stars. Central elites construed their entry
as creating an artificial Championship devoid of
natural67 rivalry grounded in traditional
belonging.
Central elites initially gained support from marginal players in opposing a rule change. Because
Counties with a small population were at a disadvantage so far as obtaining first class cricketers,68
some marginal players and peripheral elites had
translated the existing qualification rule into action
by adopting a policy of recruiting talent wherever
in the world it can be found69 and pursued cricketers from countries such as the West Indies, Australia, and India willing to qualify by residence. As
shown in Table 3, this resulted in marginal players
outperforming peripheral elites in the Championships. Marginal players finished last in the Championship only 5 times from 1950 to 1967, compared
to 13 last placings for peripheral elites and zero for
central elites.70 Thus, those marginal players who
had improved their performance by importing
cricketers under the existing rule had little incentive to vote to change it. As with their response to
the classification rule, marginal players support of
retaining naturalization was symbolic rather than
substantive, for their active importing strategy
they conceded their teams resembled a Cricket

321

League of Nations69was inconsistent with traditional belonging within the cricket-as-art logic.
Commitment to naturalization was weakened
from the mid 1960s. After oppositional classification was removed, English cricketers abandoned
the genuine amateur script for a professional script
in which field participants generally noted these
cricketers performed cricket not as art but as work:
The ultra professional approach, where efficiency
and a misguided belief that negative tactics pay,
has produced a stereotyped pattern which is deadly
to watch and which gives the appearance of being
boring to play.71 In contrast to this dull, drab72
style, overseas players performed with color, character and accomplishment.73 These new patterns
of behavior displaced the genuine amateur script.
The overseas player was scripted into the role of
genuine amateur because the field observed the
excellent craftsmen74 who learned their cricket
outside of the U.K. performed the plot of wielding
the willow with character and artistry. They adopted an enterprising manner . . . a really dynamic
attitude75 and brought added life and colour76
to the game. Performance of the amateur plot was
especially observable in West Indian players:
Cricket is a game for enjoyment and the West
Indies certainly convey the impression they enjoy
playing.77 The new script displaced the amateur
role while preserving the amateur plot: overseas
players (role) play in the aesthetic and exuberant
style of the amateur (plot).
Script displacement produced bottom-up pressure on central elites to adopt a less restrictive
approach to qualification rules to preserve the artistry of Championship cricket in the field of restricted cultural production. This was supported by
top-down pressure from societal progression toward egalitarianism. The press argued the field had
a moral duty78 to open the labor market and that
it was negligent79 to exclude cricketers on the
basis of an elitist qualification rule of naturalization. Surveys of the public and County members
affirmed that Englands modern egalitarian society
did not understand the exclusion of overseas stars
who could provide entertaining cricket or protection of the employment of English cricketers who
did not. The surveys were conducted by an inquiry
committee set up by MCC.71 Comprising representatives from each group of Counties, the inquiry
committee proposed the ACCC reduce the qualification period for overseas cricketers in 1966. Most
peripheral elite and marginal players were in support. However, a two-third majority was unattainable when central elites preferred to appeal to
County captains to produce cricket more consistent
with the genuine amateur script.80

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When the boring play continued through the

1966 season, gate spectators declined from the two
million who paid to see Championship cricket in
1950 to half a million, and County membership fell
for the first time.81 Central elites proposed reducing
qualification periods to one year for the 1967 season, which was agreed on.82 At season end, peripheral elites and marginal players proposed instant
qualification.83 Only four Countiesthree central
elites and one marginal playerwere opposed.
This rule change was another outcome of the ongoing institutional change process aligning a shift in
field logic with societal and organizational pressures. Naturalization did not fit with societal progression towards egalitarianism. Peripheral elites
and marginal players theorized, The old conception that a cricketer should be establishing his family in the county of his adoption is a relic of the
amateur game. When a man is earning his living in
any occupation he gets the job first and then takes
up residence.84 Naturalization put inappropriate
resource constraints on Counties by impeding employment of cricketers able to perform the artistry
of the amateur plot: These overseas players will
replace the old amateursplayers who went out
there to entertain.85
At the field, central elites insisted on quotas and
conditions on transfers to prevent the descent of
cricket into the commercial level of soccer.86
Thus, the rule change was a carrier of increased
permeability in the boundary between logics of
cricket-as-art and cricket-as-business. A practice
consistent with the latterimporting star cricketers
to increase gateswas made legitimate because it
preserved the field of restricted cultural productions survival, albeit in a less pure form, and it
preserved the cricket-as-art logic that was a source
of power, status, and identity for the central elite.
DISCUSSION
In this study, we examined the role that different
groups of organizational actors play in institutional
change processes occurring across societal, field,
and organizational levels over time. We focused on
three groups of actors located at field center, periphery, and in between. Our findings make a novel
contribution to the literature on institutional
change processes by showing when and why different groups of actors become motivated to trigger
and respond to different processual mechanisms at
different levels. We find that the middle-status
group acts as an intermediary in the top-down,
bottom-up change process in response to actions
taken by the center and periphery when evolutionary change occurs in mature organizational fields.

February

Processual Mechanisms and Groups of

Organizational Actors in Institutional Change
We present our findings on the institutional
change process in County Cricket as a three-stage
model in Figure 1. Our model shows how institutional change, as indicated by rule changes, occurred at moments of alignment between progressions of societal, field, and organizational levels. At
the societal level, the organizing structure for English society evolved from an ideological foundation
of social class in stage 1 toward egalitarianism in
stages 2 and 3. At the field level, the logic of cricket-as-art moved away from its anchor at the field of
restricted cultural production end of Bourdieus
(1993) dichotomy in stage 1 to end stage 3 as a less
pure field of restricted cultural production located
closer to the field of large-scale cultural production
logic of cricket-as-business. Rules were carriers of
this progression between ideal-type anchors, with
new rules delimiting the progression away from the
cricket-as-art logic core to the definition of the
field. Finally, the role and plot dimensions of the
scripts coming up from action at the organizational
level were progressively displaced in stages 2 and
3. We found that when scripts were translated into
human action inconsistent with the scripts themselves, displacement occurred over time. The unproblematic element of a script, which could be
either the role or the plot, was preserved, and the
problematic element was replaced with something
more representative of both human action and institutional values. Thus, a role or a plot may be
displaced as scripts are revised.
Moments of alignment in the institutional change
process were achieved via mechanisms of theorization, encoding, translating, revision/displacement,
and institutionalization. Figure 1 shows how the
formation of County Cricket as a field of restricted
cultural production was produced in stage 1 by (1)
theorization drawing down from societal ideology
about social class and (2) action, which created
script 1 of the titled amateur feeding up from the
organizational level. The rules of oppositional classification and naturalized qualification carried the
logic of cricket-as-art throughout the field. These
rules were encoded in the script and replicated in
action at the organizational level from the late
1800s through WWI and WWII. Field formation
positioned organizational actors at the center, periphery, and in between vis--vis the fields central
values and rule-making authority. These groups
triggered and responded to different processual
mechanisms in subsequent stages of the institutional change process.

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Wright and Zammuto

323

FIGURE 1
Processes of Institutional Change in English County Cricketa
SOCIETAL
LEVEL

Class-Based Hierarchy

Egalitarianism
a

Cricket Logic
Art

Cricket Logic

Business

ORGANIZATIONAL
LEVEL

TIME

Cricket Logic

Business

Rules: Universal classification

and naturalized qualification.

Script 1: Cricketers with the

title of amateur (role) play in
the amateur style (plot).

Art

Rules: Oppositional classification

and naturalized qualification.

FIELD LEVEL

Art
Art

Script 2: Cricketers who play

in the amateur style (plot) are
genuine amateurs (role).

Script 3: Overseas players (role)

play in the amateur style (plot).

Action

Action

Action

Informal production of
cricket matches.

Payment of amateurs.
Misuse of registration.
Supporters clubs.

Purposeful recruitment
of overseas players.
Political campaigning.

RULE ESTABLISHMENT

RULE CHANGE

1873/1894

1962

Business
Business

Rules: Universal classification and

instant qualification within limits.

RULE CHANGE
1967

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

In stage 2, society-level progression away from

social class after WWII exacerbated resource pressures at the organizational level. The capacity of
organizational actors to access financial and human
resources was restricted relative to their field location. Central elites located closest to the center of
the field faced the lowest resource constraints because of their size, history of success, and loyal
membership and were the most committed to the
logic of cricket-as-art. In contrast, actors located at
the field periphery were the most resource-constrained. Because these marginal players subscribed superficially to the values embedded in the
cricket-as-art logic, they were also the most cognitively open to deviating from institutional rules
and expectations for sourcing cricketers. Marginal
players reduced their resource disadvantage by deviating from the field-level logic through organization-level acts of translation, resulting in some marginal players outperforming peripheral elites.
Peripheral elites had a foot in both the center and
periphery. Like central elites, they subscribed to
the cricket-as-art logic; like marginal players, they
struggled with postwar resource constraints. When

the deviant translations of marginal players further

increased these resource pressures and undermined the central values of the field, peripheral
elites were uniquely positioned to perceive the lack
of alignment between societal, field, and organizational levels as an institutional contradiction (Seo
& Creed, 2002). Rules made sense as carriers of field
logics only if they were enforced, and the field was
sustainable only if its central logic accommodated
societal evolution.
Peripheral elites leveraged their position between the center and periphery of the field to broker between central elites and marginal players for
incremental institutional change to bring the societal, field, and organizational levels back into alignment. When peripheral elites joined central elites
to police the rules, marginal players mobilized to
support field change because policing would reverse the performance gains achieved through their
translations. Having manipulated marginal players
into supporting field change, peripheral elites then
reduced central elites resistance through theorization that connected societal evolution to the new
scripts coming up from the resource-seeking trans-

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Academy of Management Journal

lations of marginal players. Script 2 of the genuine

amateur had displaced script 1 by preserving the
plot dimension of the original script and displacing
the role dimension. The peripheral elites theorized
a new classification rule (universal classification)
would bring the fields logic back into alignment
with the societal shift toward egalitarianism and
with the new script feeding up into the field from
the organizational level. The new rule was institutionalized by County Crickets rule makers and encoded script 2 as institutional expectations for
action.
In stage 3, the mechanisms repeated for the
change in the qualification rule. Peripheral elites
again acted as intermediaries in a top-down, bottom-up change process through theorization to
bring the field back into alignment with the societal
and organizational levels. Further progression toward egalitarianism had occurred in societal ideology, and a new script, script 3, had displaced script
2 and fed up into the field from translations of
marginal players.
Our findings offer new insight into the literature
on middle-status conformity and the literature on
institutional change. In keeping with the argument
from sociology that middle-status groups conform
(Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001), we found that the
initial deviant response came from actors at the
periphery and not from those between the center
and periphery. We found, however, that this latter
group of organizations became motivated to broker
in the interest of change, rather than conform,
when they perceived the peripherys deviant actions threatened their own survival and the fields
common purpose and values. Extending institutional studies that have focused narrowly on the
role of either center or periphery in initiating
change (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Hensmans,
2003; Leblebici et al., 1991; Rao et al., 2003), we
find that the group of actors between center and
periphery plays an important role in mediating topdown, bottom-up change processes.
Scope Conditions and Future Research
Although our data collection and analysis were
limited to a single case study of one cultural field,
we believe our theoretical insight that the group of
actors between a fields center and periphery serve
as intermediaries in top-down, bottom-up institutional change processes is generalizable to other
fields within two scope conditions. First, our findings apply to mature organizational fields only and
not to emerging fields. In a mature organizational
field, internal structures of domination and patterns of coalition are well established, and partici-

February

pants share a common understanding of the field

and its boundaries from other fields (DiMaggio &
Powell, 1983). The field is also stabilized by a system of values that defines the rules by which participants interact (Scott, 2008). This allows participants to be located in meaningful groups at the
field center, periphery, and in between in relation
to the fields central value system and authority
structure. Moreover, in mature fields information
exchange and interaction between participants is
deep, frequent, and codified (DiMaggio & Powell,
1983). Thus, the actions of each group of field participants are visible to, and consequential for, other
groups and the field as a collective. Without this
visibility and mutual dependence, the group between the center and periphery is neither aware of,
nor disadvantaged by, the deviant actions of the
periphery. It follows that the necessary motivation
for peripheral elites to engage in a field-level political response to the organization-level deviance of
marginal players is absent in emerging fields, in
which information exchange, interaction, and
shared purpose are tacit, informal, and still
developing.
Second, our findings apply only to mature fields
impacted by evolutionary societal change and not
to those affected by discontinuous change threatening field survival. Evolutionary change in societal
ideology triggers the processual mechanisms we
observed that ultimately motivated a group between the center and periphery to act to bring the
field logic back into alignment with societal and
organizational levels. Their action involved theorization of incremental changes in institutional rules
and practices reflecting a movement along a continuum between multiple field logics as ideal
types. We expect to see this same process playing
out in other fields in which societal progression
toward modernity feeds down into a field as a shift
toward a market logic and away from a logic historically framed as its opposition. This includes
other cultural fields, such as museums (DiMaggio,
1991; Oakes, Townley, & Cooper, 1998) and orchestras (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2005), and professional
fields, such as health care (Reay & Hinings, 2005,
2009; Scott, Ruef, Mendel, & Caronna, 2000) and
accounting (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Suddaby
& Greenwood, 2005).
Our study suggests a new point of departure for
future research into institutional change may be to
conceive of multiple logics not as discrete units but
as continuums between ideal types. This may provide new insight into the processual mechanisms
by which multiple logics play out in fields over
time (Greenwood, Diaz, Li, & Lorente, 2010; Rojas,
2010) and how hybridized logics emerge at the

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Wright and Zammuto

organizational level (Battilana & Dorado, 2010).

Our findings also invite future research into how
the process of institutional change varies in mature
fields impacted by discontinuous societal change,
such as fields facing political revolutions and exogenous shocks such as the oil crisis and, potentially, climate change. The processual mechanisms
are likely to differ between institutional change
triggered by societal disruptions and societal evolutions of the type we study here. More research in
a variety of disrupted and evolving fields is
needed to further unpack this scope condition.
Finally, our findings highlight the important role
of scripts in institutional change processes and
point to the need for more research into script
displacement as a mechanism for institutional
change and maintenance. In contrast to a recent
study of Cambridge dining hall rituals, which reported that organization-level scripts maintain the
British class system at the societal level (Dacin,
Munir, & Tracey, 2010), we found that scripts were
inverted to support societal evolution from social
class hierarchies to egalitarianism. That is, the
same scripts encoding cricket-as-art at the beginning of the institutional change process were used
to theorize the introduction of a limited number of
rules and practices consistent with a cricket-asbusiness logic at the end. Future research may explore the different processes by which scripts function to maintain or change institutional logics
within organizational fields.
Conclusions
Scholars of institutional change have made significant inroads into building a body of knowledge
about how change plays out in mature organizational fields. However, research to date has tended
to privilege either a vertical lens, emphasizing
change processes across the multiple levels of an
institutional system, or a horizontal lens, focusing
on contests among field participants in driving
change (Schneiberg, 2006). Our study shows the
advantages of incorporating both lenses for building processual explanations of the dynamics of institutional change. By examining which groups of
organizational actors were triggering and responding to different mechanisms at different levels in
the change process over time, we were able to develop a richer account of how and why resources,
interests, and actions affect institutional change
than was possible to do in previous studies. The
dynamics of interaction among field center, periphery, and in between, across levels over time, illuminates how and why microlevel institutional
shifts occur, manifested in the very concrete ac-

325

tions of some field participants and the ongoing

mobilization of discourse by others. Although our
findings are limited to a single case study, it covered a sufficiently lengthy time period to confirm
the processual mechanisms linking societal, field,
and organizational levels and the role played by
different groups of actors over two cycles of institutional change. Because this offers some confidence in the processes we uncovered, we encourage other researchers to combine vertical and
horizontal lenses to develop process theories of
change.

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April L. Wright (a.wright@business.uq.edu.au) is a senior

lecturer at the University of Queensland Business
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Raymond F. Zammuto (r.zammuto@business.uq.edu.au)

is a professor of strategy at the University of Queensland
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uses organization theory as a framework to study organizational culture, adaptation, and institutional change.
9.

APPENDIX
Archival Sources
1. Committee governance procedures, as explained in
this section, were sourced from minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 14, 1962, and minutes of the
meeting of the MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, March
18, 1957.
2. For example, correspondence dated December 11,
1953, states: As I regard you as one of the few who
understands Laws and Rules, I think you had better
come over to my house . . . it will be quite impossible
to arrive at the correct decision at a big Committee
meeting and so I feel that some of us must make the
decision beforehand, after going very thoroughly into
the two cases and we must persuade the Committee
to agree with our decision.
3. For example, correspondence dated March 18, 1958,
from Lancashire to the MCC secretary, states: The
odd thing is that we are yielding income to Counties
who really do not need it at all. I am referring to
Counties like Glamorgan, Derbyshire and Worcestershire and many others who have such a considerable
income from sources not connected with cricket that
this will be a mere drop in the ocean. They may, of
course, say and I suppose quite rightly that we could
have a supporters club if we wished. Whilst this is
true of Surrey, Yorkshire and Lancashire it is, I imagine, not the case with MCC. The MCC secretary
replied on March 20, 1958, that I agree with you that
we are yielding income to many Counties who really
do not want it.
4. For example, correspondence dated March 23, 1961,
from the Glamorgan secretary to the MCC secretary
states: I have no desire to come up and attend the
Meeting. It seems to me quite unnecessary to add
another 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 experienced 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 mid
1800s is recorded in a 15-volume work (Scores and
Biographies, Fred Lillywhite, 1862). It records Kent
vs. Surrey as the first inter-County match in 1773.
The Laws of Cricket were first codified in 1744 and
subsequently revised in 1774.
7. England v Australia (19111912 Tour), by Sir Pelham
Warner (1912, MCC). Warner was a first-class cricketer for Oxford University, Middlesex, and England
from 1895 to 1920, later becoming MCC president.
8. The Guide to Cricketeers, Lillywhite (1849) (pub-

10.
11.
12.

13.

14.

15.

16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

24.
25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

February

lished annually from 1848 to 1866 and a forerunner

to the Wisden Cricketers Almanack).
The Cricket Field, Reverend James Pycroft; first published in 1851; 1922 edition published by St. James
Press, edited by F. S. Ashley Cooper.
Tom Browns Schooldays, Thomas Hughes (1857).
Newbolt (1925). Vita Lampada, Sir Henry Newbolt, was first published in 1912.
The Badminton Book of Cricket was first published
in 1887 (Longmans Green, London); see also (Sir
Theodore) Cook (1927), Character and Sportsmanship (Williams & Norgate, London).
Cardus (1922). Neville Cardus was a music critic and
cricket writer for the Manchester Guardian, and his
articles and books elevated cricket to the intelligentsia in the 1920s.
The Jubilee Book of Cricket, Prince K. S. Ranjitsinhji
(1897, Wm. Blackwood & Sons). Prince Ranji played
first-class cricket for Cambridge University, Sussex,
and England from 1893 to 1912.
Batchelor (1951). C. B. Fry, quoted, played first-class
cricket for Oxford University, Sussex, Hampshire,
and England from 1894 to 1921.
Birley (2000); quote attributed to Louis Hall, professional cricketer in the 1880s.
C. L. R. James autobiographical book was first published in 1963.
MCCs amateur classification rule written in 1878.
Sir John Squire, Introduction, Cricket, by Neville
Cardus (1931, Longmans Green, London).
Pardon (1911).
Letter to the editor, Cricket (May 1913).
Fry (1937).
Report of the Commission to Investigate the Problems Confronting the Counties Taking Part in the
First-Class County Championship (Findlay Commission), December 1937.
ACCC (1950).
Memorandum, February 8, 1962, Supporters
Clubs, sent to members of the Cricket Enquiry
Committee.
Calculations based on County annual financial records submitted to the ACCC for the period 1956 60.
Normal cricket income was defined by the ACCC as
constituting all membership revenue, gate and stand
revenue, season tickets, car park (summer only),
score cards and publications, sale of rights (television, photography, cushions), catering (summer
only), share of Test match profits (including television and broadcasting), foreign tours share, and pluvious insurance claims (wet weather).
Data calculated from the minutes of 15 meetings of
the Registration Committee from April 11, 1949, to
January 8, 1951, in which marginal players made 24,
peripheral elite 17, and central elite 8 applications
for special registration.
Proposal submitted to the ACCC by MCC secretary to
amend rule 3 of the Rules of County Cricket, dated
November 15, 1950.
Memorandum written by the chairman of the Amateur Status Sub-Committee, titled An appreciation

2013

30.

31.

32.
33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.
40.
41.

42.

Wright and Zammuto

of the problems connected with the enquiry into

amateur status in English cricket, dated September
30, 1957.
Minutes of the meeting of the Special Sub-Committee re Future Welfare of First-class Cricket, January
23, 1957.
Calculations based on County annual financial records submitted to the ACCC for the period 1957 60.
Total expenses were defined as administration, professional 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.
Minutes of the meeting of the Cricket Enquiry Committee, May 29, 1962.
Minutes of meetings of Amateur Status Standing
Committee, June 25, 1958, July 19, 1960, and April
11, 1961.
Minutes of meeting of Amateur Status Standing
Committee, November 28, 1957, and correspondence
between MCC secretary and Somerset, July 11, 1958.
Allowable expenses for amateurs are for traveling by
rail, car, and taxi to matches; hotels and meals; tipping; upkeep of clothing and equipment; and entertainment allowance for captains.
Correspondence between MCC secretary and chair of
the Amateur Status Standing Committee, March
17, 1961.
Memorandum Amateur Status, prepared by the
Sub-Committee on Amateur Status for the Cricket
Enquiry Committee, dated May 29, 1962.
Letter sent by MCC secretary to the chairman of the
Amateur Status Standing Committee, dated November 7, 1958. Also letters sent to the Amateur Status
Standing Committee by Derbyshire secretary dated
August 14, 1958; by Northamptonshire secretary
dated November 12 and 17, 1958; by Worcestershire
secretary dated October 29, 1958; and by Glamorgan
secretary dated April 26, 1960.
Quote is from a letter from Northamptonshire to Amateur Status Standing Committee, dated February 15,
1961. Similar comments were expressed by other
Counties in minutes of meetings of MCC Cricket SubCommittee, ACCC, Special Sub-Committee re Amateur
Status and a field conference on amateur status and by
players at the captains meetings. Editorials in the Wisden Almanack and articles in the Cricketer and newspapers carried similar commentary. That a field consensus had emerged around a new script was further
supported in scholarly books on cricket history.
Minutes of meeting of Special Sub-Committee re
Amateur Status, November 15, 1957.
Minutes of the County Captains Meeting, December
12, 1956.
Memorandum on amateur status prepared by Glamorgan and circulated to all Counties and MCC, dated
November 26, 1962.
Minutes of the meeting of the MCC Cricket SubCommittee, November 13, 1962.

329

43. Memorandum prepared by two members of MCC

Cricket Sub-Committee, dated October 29, 1962 and
circulated to all Counties.
44. Minutes of Advisory County Cricket Committee
meeting, November 26 1962.
45. Minutes of the meeting of the Special Sub-Committee re Amateur Status, January 31, 1957.
46. Memorandum written by Kent to support the clubs
proposal to the ACCC, dated September 24, 1962.
47. Report of Special Sub-Committee to Examine Amateur Status, February 14, 1958. As with note 38, the
quote is from a single document, but similar views
were expressed by field-level committees, individual
Counties, and the cricket media in a range of
documents.
48. The number and percentages of amateurs reported in
this paragraph are calculated from the scorecards of
all County Championship matches played in 1936
and in 1960.
49. Fry (1958). Reply by MCC secretary to letter from the
public, dated March 25, 1957.
51. Memorandum titled The importance of the first
days play in County matches and dated February
21, 1961, written by member of Cricket Enquiry Committee and circulated to all committee members.
52. Minutes of the meeting of Cricket Enquiry Committee, November 23, 1961.
53. Minutes of meeting of the Special Sub-Committee re
Future Welfare of First-class Cricket, November 28,
1956 and Report of the Special Sub-Committee re
Future Welfare of First-class Cricket, January
12, 1957.
54. Minutes of the meeting of the Cricket Enquiry Committee, March 21, 1961.
55. Minutes of the meeting of Special Sub-Committee re
Future Welfare of First-class Cricket, October
15, 1956.
56. Minutes of the meeting of Special Sub-Committee re
Structure of First-Class Cricket, April 25, 1961.
57. Minutes of the meeting of Special Sub-Committee re
Structure of First-Class Cricket, June 16, 1961.
58. Minutes of meeting of Special Sub-Committee re
Amateur Status, October 9, 1957.
59. Memorandum written by Glamorgan to support the
Counties proposal to the ACCC, dated November
26, 1962.
60. Glamorgan and the Amateur Status Standing Committee exchanged 11 letters from April 26, 1960, to May 4,
1961. Similarly, when a cricketers amateur status was
ruled as invalid and the cricketer subsequently refused
to play as a professional, Northamptonshire stated the
following in a letter of complaint to the Amateur Status
Standing Committee dated May 18, 1960: The loss of
a Test cricketer to the game is a prospect which my
Committee view with dismay.
61. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC meeting, December 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, November
11, 1962.

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64. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, December

9, 1963.
65. Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 18, 1964.
66. Calculations based on County annual financial records submitted to the ACCC for the period 1957 60.
67. Minutes of the meeting of the MCC Cricket SubCommittee, 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 Championship records in Wisden Cricketers 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 of
Kent, treasurer of MCC, former captain of England
and Sussex, vice chairman of Essex, chairman of
Yorkshire, chairman of Surrey, captain and County
secretary of Glamorgan, captain of Middlesex, secretary of Surrey, secretary of Leicestershire, secretary
of Northamptonshire, and a cricket correspondent
for a national daily newspaper. Information collected
by the special subcommittee included a questionnaire completed by all Counties, a national opinion
poll of the general public administered through a
newspaper, a postal survey of County members, and
a postal survey of all County players (in excess of 100
replies). Given the make-up of the special subcommittee and its information sources, the quote contained in the final report of this special subcommit-

72.
73.
74.

76.
77.

79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.

85.
86.

February

tee expresses field consensus that a new script had

emerged.
When the circus comes to town, Observer, November 26, 1967.
Still some doubts about importing stars, Guardian,
November 28, 1967.
James D. Coldham, Ups and Downs of Northamptonshire, Wisden Almanack, 1958, p. 75. Memorandum, Tempo of the Game, written by chairman of
the Cricket Enquiry Committee and circulated to
members, dated February 21, 1961.
Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 14, 1962.
Wisden Cricketers Almanack (1964). Dont give
Gary out this time, Daily Mirror (November 28,
1967).
Qualification must be waived, Times, November
28, 1967.
Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 12, 1966.
Irving Rosenwater, article in The Cricketeer, August
1967, p. 2.
Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, March 15, 1967.
Minutes of the meeting of the ACCC, November
29, 1967.
Memorandum written by Gloucestershire club to
support proposal submitted to the ACCC meeting,
November 29, 1967.
Agenda for the meeting of the ACCC, November
29, 1967.
Overseas players can be signed at once, Daily Telegraph (November 30, 1967).