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The brave new world of English cricket was unveiled when the first match in the two-division National Cricket League was played between the Leicestershire Foxes and the Hampshire Hawks.

But underneath all the publicity-speak, it was still another grim early-season struggle on a seamer's pitch in front of a few hundred shiverers which had to be abandoned before a result was reached.

The new one-day league - featuring two divisions of nine teams each, based on last year's positions in the Sunday League - was therefore launched with the Foxes and Hawks dividing the carrion of four points between them. For the first time in English cricket there will be promotion and relegation, three teams going down and three up at the season's end.

Officially it is to be known as the CGU National Cricket League. The sponsors are a new organisation borne out of a merger between Commercial Union, an insurance company, and General Accident (another insurance company, not a name for English cricket waiting to happen), who are putting in £6 million over the next four years.

The best that can be said so far about the new 45-over competition is that it is an improvement on the 40-over Sunday League, if only because anything would be better than that late and unlamented competition. When Leicestershire, under their stand-in captain Vince Wells, decided to bat first at 1.30, Hampshire at least had the scope of five more overs in which to take wickets; but teatime rain and irony combined to halt their innings for good after 40, just as of old.

Apart from the new soubriquets for each county, promotion and relegation, and the new 45-over format, the main difference is the free hit which batsmen can enjoy after a no-ball. It was the 32nd over of Leicestershire's innings, delivered by John Stephenson, which saw history being made. Stephenson was no-balled by the umpire Barrie Leadbeater for overstepping, which prompted every fielder to drop as deep as he could for the next ball to Dominic Williamson.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the few hundred shiverers moved to the edge of their seats as Williamson took strike, but they did at least look up from their mittens and flasks to see him lash the bonus ball past point for four. In some pre-season one-day friendlies certain batsmen have been lining up like baseballers to smash their free hit.

Not much other unrestrained hitting was done, so extreme was the uneven bounce. One ball from Nixon McLean reared at and gloved Aftab Habib, the next scuttled through. But most of the Foxes made some contribution to a total which was competitive in the miserable circumstances, and made more so when Hampshire's target was enlarged by the Duckworth/Lewis formula to 172 off 40 overs.

While the Foxes wore red and green, the Hawks sported dark blue and yellow and fielded, well, hawkishly, especially Giles White as he swooped at cover to catch Iain Sutcliffe's square-cut. The use of these soubriquets is not too objectionable, especially if they spring from some traditional source, as in the case of Leicestershire and the Warwickshire Bears. The connection between Derbyshire and Scorpions is rather more tenuous.

What is objectionable is that the more English cricket changes, the more it stays the same. ``Exciting, new [sic] innovations'' have been made, according to the NCL publicity, but the point remains that English domestic cricket still has three one-day competitions, which in their totality promote frothy action instead of substance.

If our first-class counties had been interested in quality, this National League would have had a 50-over format, both for its own more interesting sake and also to bring it in line with all one-day international cricket. The programme would then have been completed with the NatWest knock-out Trophy and the county championship.

Mike Kasprowicz took a wicket in his first over at home for his new county, though no more than a couple of hundred shiverers were left to see it, and another of several lifters on the day dismissed Stephenson before rain set in without 10 overs of the Hampshire reply completed. Not surprising really if you must start the cricket season in mid-April, thanks again to the obsession with quantity.