“England will come knocking this summer”, “Cracking player. Higher honours await”, these were a couple of comments when Lancashire tweeted a video clip of Liam Livingstone’s career-best 168-run knock against Somerset.
At the age of 23 when others are still trying to find their feet in the game, the highly-rated batsman has already donned the captain’s hat in the absence of regular captain Steven Croft and any person with the slightest of cricketing knowledge will agree that Livingstone has come out with flying colours.
In the first innings, when his teammates fell like a pack of cards against Somerset pacers, Livingstone waged a lone battle, scoring 68 of 109 runs. The right-handed batsman further bettered his performance in the second innings when Lancashire was in dire need of a good knock after Somerset took a 169-run lead.
Livingstone rose up to the occasion, scoring another century in this season and shared a 245-run partnership for the third wicket with Alex Davies – who made 130. By the time, Livingstone was dismissed by Jack Leach, he has batted for over seven hours to score 168 runs to put his team in a commanding position. Lancashire was leading by 191 runs.
The century was his fifth first-class century and it has come in less than a year, one more than Haseeb Hameed who had received an England call during the Test series in India last year. One of the most sought after talents in England cricket, Livingstone caught the eyes after scoring back-to-back centuries in the same game against Sri Lanka A in Dambulla in February. His record-equaling fastest-ever T20 fifty for Lancashire against Yorkshire which came off just 21 balls in 2016 before it was beaten by Jos Buttler and the 50-ball 98 runs knock against Derbyshire later in the summer only elevated his stature in the English cricketing fraternity. His phenomenal year ended with him being named as Lancashire’s Young Player of the Year for 2016.
Before that, he had garnered huge media attention in 2015, when he blasted 350 off just 138 balls for his club side Nantwich against Caldy.
Livingstone is seen by many as the face of England’s next generation of fearless cricketers who have completely transformed the fortunes of the team in the limited-overs cricket. The likes of Alex Hales, Jason Roy, Joe Root, Jos Buttler have made the Three Lions a force to reckon with in the limited-overs game and Livingstone is probably the next batsman to join the list of that belligerent list of batters.
As for the time being, he is still awaiting his maiden England call and chances are high that he will get it during the two-match ODI series against Ireland next month.