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Today, the not-so-glorious eighth, is the start of the first-class cricket season, the earliest ever. As usual it begins with a fanfare of trumpets and a rumble of timpani: Cambridge University versus Lancashire, and Oxford University against Worcestershire.

While the football season kicks off with the Charity Shield, and rugby begins with a full round of league matches, cricket peeks through the curtains with a couple of depleted counties having a net against some third-rate student teams. It's the equivalent of Liverpool playing the season's opener against Toytown.

This is symptomatic of the backwater English cricket is still thrashing about in. Tim Lamb, the England and Wales Cricket Board's chief executive, launched the new season at a City restaurant yesterday with a speech laden with optimism while behind him a big screen relayed live pictures of Robert Croft being smashed on to the grandstand roof by Ijaz Ahmed. The accompanying ECB blurb proclaimed 1999 as ``a new era for the game in this country''. The only new era I could see was one of mounting dissatisfaction.

The revenue targets for the World Cup have not been met, and there is no sponsor for this year's County Championship, which starts next week. The shortfall means the counties will receive considerably less money then expected, and the annoyed owners of Test match grounds, stripped of large amounts of anticipated profit (in some cases approaching £400,000), were verging on a refusal to stage the matches which caused further divisions. The England team's frustrations at their cheap roundabout flights in Asia and delays in receiving their World Cup contracts are piffle by comparison. No wonder the ECB's marketing director, Terry Blake, has been off work ill.

The World Cup is 35 days away. It will be a success, of course. The cricket will be great and it is likely to deliver an £11 million profit to the board, which is quite an advance from the £250,000 loss the last time it was staged here. But that will be largely swallowed up by everyday necessities. Promotional spending will suffer, and the opportunity to use the World Cup as a massive new kick-start for the game in this country could be squandered.

The 'cricketing ambassadors' announced recently - people such as John Kettley, Lesley Garrett and the stars of Goodness Gracious Me - are hardly guaranteed to make our fickle youth froth with excitement. The association with Johnny Ball (rather than his daughter Zoe) says it all.

There are some well-intentioned, diligent people at the ECB. It is not the domain of old fuddy-duddies. But the place does still look at times like a three-storey battery of hens clucking about earnestly over scraps. At least they have secured some good sponsors and broadcasters.

NatWest plan a huge World Cup publicity campaign featuring all their 2,500 branches, while the BBC, stripped of all cricket after the World Cup, are pulling out all the stops. They have 15 live matches, a further 15 highlights programmes and a superb 25-strong commentary team, including Richie Benaud, Barry Richards, Richard Hadlee and Jeff Thomson.

Then the incomparable Benaud transfers to Channel 4 for the New Zealand Test series, to be joined by Mark Nicholas, Wasim Akram, Ian Smith and possibly Michael Holding and Graham Gooch. The coverage will have a real international feel. More than that, it will be the job of recruits like me to colour in the action, and offer greater insight into the game with special features, analysis and 'jargon busting'. This is not dumbing down but lighting up. It will be accompanied by the same kind of publicity drive on buses and billboards you saw a couple of months back for the revamped Channel 4 News and Sex and the City. The game is sure to benefit.

AT county level there will be at least 20 floodlit games in the new National League (two divisions, team nicknames, 45 overs a side), which is sure to attract new spectators and boost thermal underwear sales, though the likes of Ian Austin might not be too delighted about having to trundle about with Lancashire Lightning on his back.

So there are good things happening, but not right now. Instead of starting the season with a whimper, what about inviting the new Sheffield Shield champions over for a four day appetite-whetter against our county champions? Or a Rest of the World team. Or stage a four-way tournament with the Australian, West Indian, South African and English cup winners.

OK, the weather's unpredictable, but so is it in May and September, and it is too defeatist to say, as an ECB spokesman did yesterday, that a proper launch is ``difficult because it clashes with the climax of the football season''. If domestic cricket is pushed much further into the corner, it'll vanish under the skirting.