`When should we put the kettles on?"

"At 20 overs. And we've one slow one, you know."

Just minutes away, on the Via Dolorosa of the Naas By-Pass, there are people whose minds have narrowed enough to leave only such desires as: let's pull into the garden centre and load a privet hedge into the hatch-back. But we are sitting on the wooden verandah of Halverstown Cricket Club, on the Harristown Estate, shielded from the outside world by an embrace of great, broad-leaved trees, the shimmering River Liffey, and the distant sounds of the white-clothed men on the green.

"Alec is out. Bowled by Ken Boyd."

Rural Irish cricket has its roots in the mists of colonisation, a traditional English custom gone entirely native. Halverstown is one of the oldest clubs in Ireland, a crucial link in the south-east cricket network, which includes Kilcock, Bagenalstown, Athy, Portlaoise and Mount Juliet. Sitting between William Gray, who is score-keeping, and Alec Paton, president of the club, two men who have played together since their school days 40 years ago, I am part of a time-honoured ritual.

"The records," explains Paton, "are a little bit vague. We know the club dates back to the 1880s, anyhow."

The club has moved from ground to ground during its history, and has been at Harristown for two years due to the kindness of Hubert Beaumount. The established members of the club include farmers, solicitors, hauliers, fish-mongers and Alan Ruddock, whose article sparked Albert Reynolds's famous libel case against The Sunday Times: the best thing, says Paton, about being in Harristown is that local lads keep wheeling in on their bicycles, asking: "Mister, can we learn to play cricket?"

Paton, a builder who is described also as being "in the manufacturing end of the undertaking business" ("He makes the goingaway suits", translates William Gray), built the club house with the help of other members, in a field where there had once been a cricket pitch.

"Actually," says William Gray with mystery, "I think this is where Halverstown originally played."

Their only regret is that their revered former member, P.V. Boland, whose portrait presides over the club-house, didn't live to sit on the verandah. Gray and Paton embark on a two-part elegy, rising to the question, "Did he play for Ireland?" and ending with the line: "The seat you're sitting on now is a gift of a Scottish friend of his. A Scotch team came over three weeks ago and made the presentation."

"Here now," says Paton with satisfaction, "is the tea lady," for that is the women's role in the ritual of Halverstown cricket. "It wouldn't be wholly unknown for a lady to play in a county team, who was keenly interested," explains Paton, "but she would be making up the eleven. Once it becomes harvest time, the farmers become more interested in their farms." He is quick to pay tribute to women's contribution to the club, taking as an example a cricket wife busy keeping her children off the pitch: "Noreen Brown, now, is as good as anyone else. She scorekeeps, she makes tea, this week she painted the whole front of the club house with preservative."

The kettles are already humming, as the glamorous, blonde woman unpacks the trays from the car. Karen Plewman met her husband at a cricket match in Kilcock 29 years ago, and has been making teas ever since, though as she spreads out the food under the watchful eyes of P.V. Boland, she insists she goes to no trouble over it. Claudia Greene, observing the game keenly from her rug, as she has for many, many Saturdays during her 17 years of marriage, counters: "Karen Plewman, now, would be the best tea-maker on our team. I'd say it would be good today." The tea is a central part of the ritual, one of the last relics of a meal-time which has just about disappeared: "Tea is an important part of cricket. You have tea, no matter what," explains Claudia Greene. Some clubs have better teas than others; Birr is fabled for its flans and cucumber sandwiches.

Suddenly the sea of white is moving towards the club-house, to fall on Karen Plewman's salad sandwiches, her coffee cake, her chocolate cake and her tea. The visiting team is White City from London, and mostly made up of journalists. Every year they come for a week of games in the south-east: "We play in fantastically lovely places," says Peter Oborne of the Express. "We play with the local farmers and God knows what and they're fantastically lovely people." Ruddock sums up the attraction of rural Irish cricket with the words: "It's gentle. You don't expect it. There are pockets of it everywhere."

It's tea-time, the sun is shining on the verandah, and as Paton and Gray partake of Plewman's finest, there is only one thing bothers them: that P.V. Boland is not partaking as well.

"He never saw us playing here. He approved of it though."

"He saw the ground."

"My only regret is that he could have sat here."

"He wouldn't have sat here idly. He would have passed many comments on the quality of the game."