Giles gave me confidence to produce my natural game
Paul Edwards speaks to Liam Livingstone about what lays ahead for himself and Lancashire
It’s no excuse but when you have a young side you are going to get a bit of inconsistency and we’ll be working hard at our white-ball cricket because it’s a massive part of this club
It was one of those shots which counted for much more than the six runs it earned. It was played by the Lancashire all-rounder, Liam Livingstone, on the evening of June 23 last year when he took a step and a half down the wicket and eased the Warwickshire seamer, Rikki Clarke, deep into the stands at Old Trafford.
Yet if the summer of 2016 contained nothing quite so wonderful as that blow, struck in County Championship cricket against a reverse-swinging red ball, there were plenty of other moments for the 23-year-old Livingstone to savour.
Without a first-class appearance to his credit at the start of the season, he made 547 runs in his first 11 innings at an average of 91 and also whacked Lancashire’s fastest T20 half-century off 22 balls against Yorkshire.
Livingstone’s batting in the televised, short-form Roses match brought his precocious talent to the notice of a wider audience and it may have played some part in his first Lions call-up later in the season.
Now, though, as he adjusts to the climate in Sri Lanka and settles into his first overseas tour with the Lions, the Lancashire all-rounder can look forward to games in which he can develop his talent and a new season in which it seems likely he will be promoted up the Lancashire batting order.
“I’m just keen to build on what I did last year and use that as a platform,” he said. “I want to improve in red and white-ball cricket.
“I imagine I’ll be moving up the order in four-day cricket at Lancashire and if that’s best for the team, then so be it. I just want to go about it the same way as I have since I was 12 years old.”
That faith in his natural ability is central to Livingstone’s cricket. There will be tweaks and polishes to be added, of course, but he was encouraged by Lancashire’s former director of cricket, Ashley Giles, to trust the talent that brought him to the attention of Lancashire’s coaches in the first place and he doesn’t see anything altering under the new regime of Glen Chapple and Mark Chilton.
“It’s now more acceptable for youngsters to play their own game and I know there’s no other way for me to play,” he said. “Ash gave me the confidence to do that and I can’t see that changing at all. There will be times when I make mistakes and play the wrong shot but I hope they’ll be few and far between.
“Ash took a chance on me last year and it was sad to see him go. But these are exciting times for us now Chappie’s taken over. He knows the club inside out and Mark Chilton’s been around for a while as well.
“I’ve done a lot of work with Chilly and I have a lot of faith in him. Each of us knows the way the other works and it’s a good relationship to have.”
And when the 2017 campaign gets under way in April, both Livingstone and Lancashire will be focused on preventing the decline in form which last season saw the 2015 T20 Blast winners fail to progress in limited-overs competitions and have to wait on other results on the last day of the season to be sure of keeping their Division One status.
“We don’t want to be in that situation again and hopefully we can start strong and maintain that rather than falling away,” he said.
“It’s no excuse but when you have a young side you are going to get a bit of inconsistency and in the next few months we’ll be working hard at our white-ball cricket because it’s a massive part of this club.
“We want more days like we enjoyed at Edgbaston (2015 Finals Day).”