It's Winter. So what do you do? HOWZAT 1

Wickman is devastated. There are three whole months until Winter Nets start. What will he do? As a young man, faced with a lull in cricket (and let's face it, in those days the only thing to do in the winter was to throw a ball against the wall at various speeds and hit it back again) he played HOWZAT.

What is HOWZAT?

HOWZAT is the cricket equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons. It's a game. At its most basic level the sad young pre-pubescent would take a hexagonal pencil to act as a die. With a bic biro (normally) he would press the nib of the pen in once on the first flat side he came to. Rotating it once sixth, he would press the nib in twice. Another sixth and three times. Then four etc. Then a thin line in lieu of five (of this more later) and finally six and six dots!

This pencil became the focus of the game. Finding a notebook one drew up two teams of 11. The real geek would seek out The Telegraph for versimilitude and choose two teams (preferably TEST teams) and begin a sad pencil battle between them.

Given Wickman's vintage imagine an England vs India Test. Opening the batting for England would be Boycott G, and Gooch G. Attempting to uproot their stumps would be Ghavri and Dev. The pencil would be rolled. 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6 would mean RUNNNNS for England. A 5 would mean a wicket for India. Roll the pencil again and 1 = bowled, 2 = lbw, 3 = caught etc etc. Six was always "freak dismissal" such as obstructing the field.

So totally unrealistic games of cricket were played out. The first over of a Test, Dev to Boycott might go: 6,3, 2, 4, 4, OUT (hit the ball twice). Then Roope, Knott, Cowdrey, Grace would all be bowled first ball and Underwood would score an improbable 347* to leave England to declare on 400-9 off 32.1. Or something.

India - owing to skilful rolling by the biased pre-teen, would be all out for 20 (beating New Zealand's all time lowest score) and would have to follow on, this time scoring a regrettable 19 (beating their own lowest score, this time all out obstructing the field in a world record disaster).

What was Wickman thinking?