A QUAINT image of a populace at leisure unfolds. Match stick boys in a leafless backstreet wasteland are in the middle of a no doubt competitive cricket innings.

To the left a huddle of men smoke and chat while above townspeople pause for a short view of the action and pass on to objects unknown.

The rare painting by LS Lowry with a £1 million price tag is to go on display for only the third time in history.

Known by the artist and former Bury Art Society president as A Cricket Match, the work depicts a backstreet game of cricket and was painted in 1938.

It is set be available for viewing at the Lowry in Salford for only five days between May 23 and 27 as part of the permanent exhibition, LS Lowry: The Art & The Artist.

Claire Stewart, curator of The Lowry Collection, said: “This is a real treat. A Cricket Match is a quintessential Lowry scene, captured from a distance, showing children playing on wasteland behind rows of terraced houses.

"We have a drawing in our collection called Houses in Broughton which shows the same setting and is how we were able to identify the location of this work.”

A Cricket Match has only been on public display twice before ­— the last time more than 20 years ago.

In 1939 it was chosen by Lowry to be included in an exhibition in London, and then in 1996 it very briefly appeared at Sotheby's as part of a pre-auction display when it set the the world record for the artist by selling for £282,000.

It will once again go up for auction next month and is estimated to fetch £1.2 million.

Simon Hucker, senior specialist for modern and post-war British art at Sotheby’s, said: “This exceptional painting is both a ‘classic’ Lowry, depicting the hard life of the industrial cities at the turn of the 20th century, and also quite rare in its depiction of a cricket match, even though cricket has always been very much part of Manchester life."