There's something great about Opening Day: The field perfectly manicured, the air warmed with the first hint of spring, the players looking ready in their spotless white sweaters.

Sweaters? Yes, sweaters. What, did you think I was talking about BASEBALL Opening Day? Hell, no; I'm talking about cricket.

Most New Yorkers don't bother to think about cricket -- even though it was our national pastime before we even had a nation. So while our baseball teams compete in luxurious palaces (sorry, Mr. Steinbrenner), and even our Little Leaguers have perfect diamonds, New York's 150 cricket squads must play their beloved game in the corners of our already overused parks, abandoned lots and rented space.

It's hard to root, root, root for the home team when there's no home field.

But that is finally changing. The history of cricket in America had a new chapter -- actually a whole new book -- written last week at the official groundbreaking ceremony for the city's first real cricket pitch, a 15,000-seat stadium in an unused part of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.

Yes, you read that right: 15,000 seats.

"I'm totally overwhelmed with excitement," said Gyanda "Eric" Shivnarain, president of the Floyd Bennett Cricket Club.

For Shivnarain, the stadium will be the first step in fulfilling a longtime dream: to have the best international cricket teams compete in New York City, where more than a million people of Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, English and Australian origins go positively crazy for cricket every summer.

The Floyd Bennett Cricket Club already offers clinics for kids, trying to build excitement for the world's most popular summertime sport. Shivnarain believes that if kids start playing cricket -- and can see the world's best cricket teams play at a local stadium -- cricket might become the new soccer. (Hey, Jeter, watch out. You've got nothing on India's Sachin Tendulkar!)

"Cricket is not going to replace baseball," said Shivnarain. "But we can create a bigger audience for it. I mean, soccer is becoming the new national pastime of America because kids have been playing organized soccer for years."

It's long since time for cricket to emerge from baseball's shadow -- just as baseball once overtook cricket for the hearts and mind of Americans. New York was once so mad for cricket that the world's first international cricket match -- pitting American colonists against their Canadian counterparts -- took place here in 1751. The Americans won (probably the last time the Americans won an international cricket competition) and cricket was our national pastime for another century.

But by the end of the Civil War, cricket was finally eclipsed by baseball, which required less groundskeeping and was seen as more "American," according to Tom Gilbert, author of the indispensible "Elysian Fields."

So even though we abandoned the game, former British subjects in such far-flung lands as India, Trinidad, Barbados and New Zealand clung to cricket and brought it with them when they emigrated to America.

That's why last week's groundbreaking was a big deal for the city's growing Caribbean and Indian communities. Not big enough for the mayor, mind you, whose obsession for stadium-building is apparently limited to sports mostly attended by white people from the suburbs. Hizzoner didn't even show up to turn over a shovel full of dirt for the cameras.

Nor did the city -- which is coughing up nearly $40 million for a minor-league stadium for the Mets' Coney Island team and vomiting up more than $70 million for the Yankees' minor-league Xanadu in Staten Island -- kick in even a dime for a stadium that could make New York an international capital rather than just a class-A town.

The $2 million is being raised solely by the cricketers and their fans -- in donations as small as $5.

The club's efforts inspired Peter McCarthy, who manages Floyd Bennett Field for the National Park Service.

"This is really a step ahead for the city," said McCarthy, who's more comfortable with shoulder pads and beer than a cricket sweater and tea. "I never saw a cricket match before the club started playing here last year, so for me, this has been a real education in what New York is about -- diversity."

So enjoy your Opening Day, Yankee fans. But remember, yours is not the only game in town with bats, balls and millions of fans.

--30--