The domestic cricket season was officially due to begin yesterday, with six county matches around the country.

Yorkshire, meanwhile, were expecting to open their season with a game against defending champions Essex at the Essex County Ground starting next Sunday.

Instead, as with so much else, our cricket grounds - professional and amateur - lie empty. There's no crack of leather on willow to punctuate a sleepy spring afternoon; no elegant, white-clad figures chasing a run against a picture postcard backdrop; no polite rounds of applause; no stale sandwiches or scent of warm beer.

There is little clue either, at this stage, about just when the cricket season might actually get started.

That's no reason, however, not to have something of a celebration of this most quintessentially English of summer sports.

We've been rummaging around in our electronic archive and have dug up some photos of cricket seasons and cricket characters past.

Admittedly, they're a bit short on action shots. But then let's face it, a good 90 per cent of a cricket match involves standing around in the sun waiting for the next ball to be bowled - or else trooping off the field in search of drinks or tea.

But there are some cracking photos here anyway - Don Bradman walking out for his farewell appearance at Scarborough Cricket Festival in 1948; Fred Trueman in action in1962; Geoff Boycott celebrating after notching up his 100th first class century at Headingley in 1977; and WG Grace, England's very first test centurion, standing guard at the wicket, presumably in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Oh, and there's a lovely photo, too, of children at the York School for the Blind enjoying a game of cricket at King's Manor on June 17, 1947, with the help of a rattling ball and an umpire's whistle...

1. The English cricketer WG Grace. He played in the first Test match in England - against Australia in 1880 at the Oval - and scored the first Test century by an English batsman. He died in 1915.

Cricket was probably created during Saxon or Norman times by children living in the Weald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings that lies across Kent and Sussex, according to Peter Wynne-Thomas in his 1997 book From the Weald to the World. The first definite reference to it, however, came in 1597 in a court case involving a dispute over a plot of common land in Guildford. During the hearing, a 59-year-old coroner, John Derrick, apparently testified that he and his friends had played 'creckett' on the site 50 years earlier- ie in about 1550.

It is generally believed that cricket survived as a children's game for many generations before it was increasingly taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th century. It was possibly derived from bowls by the intervention of a batsman trying to stop the ball from reaching its target by hitting it away.

2. Huntington Ladies Cricket Club in 1915. Yorkshire has a proud tradition of women's cricket - in fact, the first women's cricket club is thought to have been formed in 1887 at Nun Appleton: it was named the White Heather Club. In 1890, a team known as the Original English Lady Cricketers toured England, playing in exhibition matches to large crowds. The team was highly successful until its manager apparently absconded with the profits, forcing the team to disband.

The Women's Cricket Association was founded in 1926. The England team undertook the first international tour to Australia in 1934–5, playing the first Women's Test match between England and Australia in December 1934.

3. Children from the Yorkshire School for the Blind enjoy a game of cricket at King's Manor on June 27, 1947, with the help of a rattling ball and an umpire's whistle

4. The great Sir Don Bradman takes the field for his farewell appearance at Scarborough Cricket Festival in 1948. Still widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time, The Don scored 29 Test centuries with a Test batting average of 99.94. No-one else has ever got close

5. Fred Trueman in action in 1962. He was a Yorkshire favourite and both a class batsman and one of the greatest fast bowlers in cricket history. Once his playing career was over, he became a regular as an expert summariser on the BBC's Test match special. He died of lung cancer at Airedale General Hospital in West Yorkshire on July 1, 2006

6. Geoff Boycott (now Sir Geoffrey Boycott) at Headingley after his 100th century in first-class cricket in 1977.

Stephen Lewis