The hand that won the Ashes

“Hey, Freddie,” shouts Gary Pratt’s county colleague Jimmy Maher from the pavilion balcony. He evidently thinks the jest highly amusing, as he repeats it a dozen times while Durham wait for the skies to clear and the rain-soaked cricket ground to dry.

Maher is a rugged Australian who doesn’t understand why the Guardian has travelled several hundred miles north to do an in-depth interview with Pratt, a batsman not currently considered good enough to be in the Durham championship XI. Indeed, who hasn’t played a first-class county game for a season and a half. Maher, if I might say so, has missed the point.

Pratt, in case you missed it, was the 23-year-old substitute fielder who ran out Australian captain Ricky Ponting in the crucial fourth Test at Trent Bridge. A direct hit from cover that sent Ponting from the field mouthing imprecations at the umpire, the England fielders, coach Duncan Fletcher, a rulebook that allowed on this ace fielder, and perhaps God. The moment turned the match – Ponting was on 48, batting easily, could easily have made a hundred; the match turned the series. The real Freddie of course played a big part. But Pratt, the modest, smiling young man sitting beside me at Durham’s deserted ground in Chester-le-Street, brought the Ashes home. Pratt’s Ashes – it has a certain ring to it.

OK, G2’s interest in Pratt, this belief that his was the hand that wrested the Ashes from Australia’s grasp, has also been encouraged by one other factor – money. The monumental Flintoff has been bought up by Hodder, for a monumental sum, to do an autobiography called Being Freddie. The England captain, Michael Vaughan, is also producing a book for Hodder entitled Calling the Shots. Kevin Pietersen, hero of the Oval, has been given an epic advance by Ebury. Orion has signed the rest of the team for an official Ashes diary. Pratt is all we have left, and frankly all G2 – modest size, modest means – can afford. But we’re happy, because, however much Jimmy Maher might lampoon us from his pavilion eyrie, Pratt has a great story to tell. At least I hope he has.

First Test, Lord’s

Our hero was not able to act as a substitute at Lord’s because of his commitments at Durham, so we have to accept that these memoirs of an unforgettable summer get off to a slow start. But this is not a wholly bad thing. The Aussies annihilated us in this game and it’s best forgotten. So we’ll move swiftly on.

Second Test, Edgbaston

Gary had subbed several times before for England and was electrified when the call came to join the squad in Birmingham, where England launched a remarkable fightback, scoring more than 400 on the first day. “The atmosphere was amazing,” he says. “My job was to ferry out drinks and bananas, that sort of thing. I was doing it with Graham Swann. [Not yet under contract, as far as I know. One for the Independent to follow up perhaps.] Then, when Australia were batting, we made sure we kept the doors of the dressing rooms open, so all the atmosphere and noise would come inside.” A brilliant ploy!

Gary was also quickly into action in the field. “It was absolutely fantastic to go out there, the situation that the game was in. Just great. I did little short stints – two overs here, four overs there.”

Any great pieces of fielding, half-chances at runouts, crucial runs saved? “No not really,” says Gary honestly (if mildly irritatingly). “I hardly touched the ball. It was pretty amazing considering the amount of time I was out there.”

But Sunday, what about that extraordinary Sunday when England, having looked as if they were strolling to victory, scraped home by two runs when Aussie tailender Michael Kasprowicz gloved one down the legside to Geraint Jones behind the stumps? How did that feel in the dressing room?

“I wasn’t in the dressing room. I’d had to go back to Durham to play a game against Bangladesh, so I missed the great day. [What is Graham Swann’s number, by the way?] We were out on the field up here as the game at Edgbaston came to a climax. Eight to win, three to win … We were thinking, ‘It can’t be true, it can’t be true.’

Did anyone call you after the match? “No they didn’t actually. I just went back home and watched the highlights. The winning catch was amazing, wasn’t it?” Yes, I remember it well: I was in a service station on the A30 at the time, jumping up and down. Anyone fancy my recollections? Granta perhaps.

Third Test, Old Trafford

Gary was not called upon. His moment of destiny was still on hold.

Fourth Test, Trent Bridge

See it like a symphony. Possibly Mahler. This is the fourth movement and it’s about to reach the most staggering climax.

“I hadn’t been on the field much before Saturday. Just the odd couple of overs here and there. Then when I heard that Simon [Jones] had gone to hospital and I was going to be on for three and a half hours, that was a pretty good feeling. I was looking forward to it, and when I got on I just wanted the ball to come to me every single time. I knew this was going to be a career highlight.”

Describe it, Gary, describe it. That career-defining moment. “I was fielding at cover and Damien Martyn’s just dropped the ball in front of him and shouted ‘Yes’, but the ball had a bit more pace on it than he expected. I thought, ‘Right, this is my chance here’, ran round the ball, clean pick-up in two hands, looked up, saw maybe one and a half stumps and as soon as I’ve let go of the ball I’ve thought ‘That’s hit.’ I wasn’t sure immediately that Ponting was out, but all the guys knew he was. I was thinking, ‘Please be out’. Then it came up on the big screen – OUT! – and it was just the best feeling in the world. Awesome. All the guys jumped on me and Freddie picked me up. It was a great moment.

“After that I ran back to my position. The crowd were on their feet giving me an ovation, singing songs – ‘There’s only one Gary Pratt’. They sang that again at the victory celebrations in Trafalgar Square, well a couple of people did, which was pretty moving to be honest.”

I am a little tearful: this delightful young man, plucked from obscurity to make a crucial intervention in the greatest Test series of all time. A magnificent win for England and a world exclusive for G2. Better still a free world exclusive for G2. Eat your heart out, Hodder.

The photographer gets Gary to pose with the ball. OK, not (open itals) the (close itals) ball – the ball with which Ponting was run out – because it has mysteriously disappeared. Gary thinks Freddie has it for taking five wickets in the innings, but as careful research by me (ie reading the scorecard) has shown, he didn’t take five, he only took two. This Freddie myth is getting out of hand. That’s Gary’s ball and he wants it back! Not least for the cover of the book that I am certain we will now do together as a result of this piece – The Hand That Won The Ashes. (“Don’t be silly,” says Gary when I mention this possibility. “There’d only be one page in it.” He evidently doesn’t understand what spirited – and handsomely remunerated – ghostwriters can achieve.)

Ponting threw a major wobbly after the runout incident, but Gary didn’t see or hear anything, and no words passed between them. Pity, advance-wise. Oh well – we weren’t looking for seven figures from Hodder; six will do.

Gary again had to return to Durham for the final day of the Test, to play for his county against Scotland, except that he wasn’t picked. England won the Test by three wickets after a moderately exciting run chase. You will probably read about it in Ashley Giles’ The King of Spain and Matthew Hoggard’s Hoggy’s Half-Hour – they were the two at the crease as the final dozen or so runs were carved out. OK, Gary and I will look at five figures.

Fifth Test, The Oval

Gary subbed for four days of the vital final Test – he again had to miss the Sunday because he was playing a one-day game for Durham but was back in time for the monster celebrations, thank God. Do you ever get bored as a sub? “Not at all,” he says. “Just to be watching Test cricket is great. I’m like a fan who’s got the opportunity to go on the field and do something special.”

By now, this supersub was a celebrity. There really was only one Gary Pratt. “Whenever I got on the field, there was always a huge cheer,” he says. “I think it was just to wind the Aussies up. I ran out on the second day and did a good bit of fielding which got a big cheer. Then they hit another one to me and the crowd all shouted ‘No!’ ”

He was also now seen as an integral member of the side by the England regulars. “They just make you feel so much part of the team. It’s fantastic the way that everybody talks to you the same, takes the mick out of you the same.” When the Ashes were safely won, there was Gary in the celebratory team picture, arms around Hoggy and Harmy.

Bookmaker William Hill was convinced, too, paying out to a friend of Pratt’s who two years ago had wagered £100 on him playing for England at odds of 33-1. A cool £3,300 profit. “I spoke to him yesterday and he was pretty overjoyed,” says Gary. “I said, ‘I can’t believe they paid out.’ Caps are not awarded to substitute fielders; the bookie had no need to pay. “Given the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his unexpected starring role when he ran Ponting out, we thought it would be a little churlish not to pay out,” said Hill’s spokesman Graham Sharpe, who knows a bandwagon when he sees one.

Gary also played his full part in the unforgettable (at least to non-participants) post-match bender after the draw at the Oval that secured the Ashes. “The feeling in the dressing room was fantastic, everybody in a circle singing. We stayed at the ground until about 10.30 having a drinking with their guys. Then we went out for a few drinks and then back to the hotel – nothing too drastic. By the end it was just me and Freddie in the bar.

“You were the last to leave?” I ask with mounting excitement. “We didn’t really leave. We just stayed down there for breakfast.” (Note to Hodder: we’re back to six figures.) Then on to meet the cricket-loving Mr Blair, who probably thinks Ricky Ponting played alongside Jackie Milburn, though the generous Pratt gives him the benefit of the doubt. “I think he understood what Michael [Vaughan] meant when he told him I had run out Ricky, which I was quite surprised about because I can imagine quite a few things go on in his life.”

Naturally, Pratt was also atop the victory bus. “We hadn’t been expecting the scale of the event,” he says. “We went around the first corner and it was like ‘Oh my Lord’. There were thousands and when we got to Trafalgar Square, it was like …” Words fail him, but Hodder’s editors will be surprised what we can come up with if the offer is right.

But I have left the best till last. During the end-of-series drink shared by the two sides after their historic encounter, with darkness descending on the Oval and the first chill winds of autumn blowing in from the Vauxhall End, Ponting, his anger over substitutes forgotten, the wounds of the series healed, the great spirit in which the matches had been played welling up within him, gave Gary his boots!

“We were in there having a drink and he was sat in his seat, just looking at his boots, and he said, ‘Do you want them?’ I said, ‘That’d be great’, and he said, ‘Yeah, you can have them.’ So I went, ‘Alright, fantastic.’ He stood up, we shook hands, and he said ‘good luck’ to me. I said, ‘thanks very much’. Then he signed a picture of Freddie holding me up, which all the England guys signed as well.”

You probably won’t believe me, but the boots story really is a G2 world exclusive. So stop your mocking: Gary Pratt is a great guy and, still young, he believes that one day he will play for England as a batsman, and not just as an expert fielder, that his friend will win his bet properly. The Hand That Won The Ashes might just be chapter one. And beware the curse of Pratt: the rain did eventually relent, the sun came out, and Jimmy Maher – the gnarled Aussie opening batsman who had enjoyed ribbing our youthful champion – was lbw for 0.

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