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Cricket's small fry are thrown into the big pond of the revamped NatWest Trophy today, looking to make waves rather than their traditional ripples. Eight Minor Counties, three first-class Recreational Board XIs, Holland, Ireland and Scotland have survived to tread water in a third-round programme that sees the introduction of the 18 first-class counties.

It is a sink-or-swim contest that has had a habit of ending belly-up in recent years. Scotland, who hardly qualify as minnows these days, embarrassed Worcestershire last season but no Minor County has achieved an authentic slaying of a first-class opponent since Cheshire kept their nerve in a famous one-wicket win over Northamptonshire at Chester in 1988.

The 14 teams who have progressed from the first two rounds have automatic home advantage - including the three Board XIs, who are playing in the competition for the first time as part of the ECB's 'Raising the Standard' mandate - but the benefits are questionable. David Surridge, captain of the Hertfordshire side who defeated Derbyshire in a bowl-out when rain prevented any play at Bishop's Stortford in 1991, believes that the Minor Counties clubs may have inadvertently been their own worst enemies in bridging what is a palpable gulf in playing standards.

Surridge said: ``Playing at home is an advantage to a Minor Counties team but the clubs involved always strive to produce such good wickets and that lessens the chance of an upset. They don't want to produce poor pitches for what are prestigious games but the spate of wins in the 1980s had a lot to do with the wickets, or the influence of an overseas player.''

Certainly, Cheshire's conquest of 1988 was on a slow, choking pitch, and Somerset's defeat by Buckinghamshire at High Wycombe the previous year came on a wicket described as being softer than ``Aunt Ethel's suet pudding'' by Peter Roebuck, who played for the losers. Further back, the dry summer of 1976 furnished Hertfordshire's spinners with a perfect turner to whittle out Essex at Hitchin.

Overseas players have also diminished since they were banned from domestic Minor Counties cricket in the mid-1980s, though several employ members of the foreign legion today. Andrew Tweedie, a South African paceman who is playing for Old Hill in the Birmingham League, is in the Herefordshire side for their historic first home tie in the competition against Yorkshire at Kington, big-hitting Australian all-rounder Neil Hancock plays in Devon's match with Worcestershire and Mike Rindel, a South African unlucky not to figure in his side's World Cup plans, is Buckinghamshire's import against Warwickshire.

The Durham Board XI also use Andrew Hall, a South African, against Gloucestershire, while Cumberland select Terry Hunte, a West Indian-born batsman now qualified as an Englishman, in their tie with Sussex.

Cumberland, who also have a cluster of former first-class players in John Glendenen, Ashley Metcalfe, Steve O'Shaughnessy, David Pennett and Marcus Sharp, have made their best start to a season for years, winning all six one-day games in the NatWest Trophy and ECB 38-County Cup. However, Sussex can also point to five straight wins in the National League.

Scotland's hopes of repeating last year's win against Surrey are hardly enhanced by the loss of most of their World Cup players, and there are several notable absentees from the first-class counties. Tom Moody has been given permission to delay his return to county cricket so he can join in Australia's World Cup celebrations. Moody has flown home to be part of the ticker-tape parade and dinner in honour of Steve Waugh's squad in Melbourne and therefore misses Worcestershire's seaside showdown at Exmouth.

Warwickshire's Allan Donald is unlikely to play against Buckinghamshire at Marlow, but will be there in a coaching capacity in the absence of Phil Neale, who has taken a couple of days' leave in the wake of the news that Bob Woolmer is to return to Edgbaston. Dominic Cork is missing from the Derbyshire line-up against Bedfordshire at Luton and there is no Michael Atherton in the Lancashire team who make their first defence of the trophy against Hertfordshire at Radlett.

Alan Ormrod, the former Lancashire coach, is now director of cricket at Hertfordshire, and captain Nick Gilbert said: ``I've played in four of these games before and they are a bit like getting married because you forget most of them.'' A win for any of the 14 lesser lights would surely be something to remember.