Player Profile
If Jos Buttler is seen as the world’s most destructive white ball batter, then his Lancashire team-mate and fellow T20 World Cup winner Liam Livingstone isn’t far behind.
Like his more experienced colleague, the Barrovian has played all three formats of international cricket for England, his highlight undoubtedly coming when he played an ever-present role in winning the T20 WC crown in Australia in late 2022.
He first debuted in a T20 against South Africa in summer 2017, following that with an ODI bow in March 2021 in India. Most recently, he debuted in Tests in Pakistan in late 2022, but a knee injury in the field cut short his bow and he has not yet added to a solitary Test cap.
The big-hitting all-rounder has been an integral part of Lancashire Lightning’s T20 side for a number of years and is now making waves on the franchise circuit having featured for the likes of Rajasthan Royals and Punjab Kings (India), Perth Scorchers (Australia), MI Cape Town (South Africa) and Karachi Kings (Pakistan). He has also represented the Birmingham Phoenix in the Hundred.
This all came on the back of a series of impressive displays for Lancashire against the white and red ball in 2016, earning praise from many quarters.
‘Livvy’, now 30, won the Vitality Blast with the Lightning in 2015 - his breakthrough campaign.
He equalled Lancashire’s fastest ever T20 fifty against Yorkshire off 21 balls in 2016, although that was beaten later in the Blast by Buttler, and added 345 Blast runs a year later at a lofty strike rate of 136.
In 2018, Livingstone finally notched an inevitable century in T20 cricket with a 51-ball blitz at Derbyshire and has continued to catch the eye with his ability to play 360 degrees, becoming noted for the audacious as well as the aggressive.
The right-hander was on Lancashire’s Academy between 2009-2011 and on the Scholarship programme in 2012-13.
His breakthrough innings came against Kent in a 50-over match at Canterbury in August 2015, hitting a match-winning 93.
Livingstone, who also bowls more than useful leg-spin and off-spin and is a gun fielder, had trials with Durham as a junior, but he played Under 13s and 15s cricket for the Red Rose, while also playing Minor Counties cricket for Cumberland.
He scored Championship centuries against Somerset and Warwickshire in 2016, his first season in the side, on the way to a haul of 815 runs, which contributed to him being named as Lancashire’s Young player of the year.
He had initially shot to fame by hitting a record-breaking 350 in a club match for Nantwich in April 2015.
His 2017 summer with Lancashire was a memorable one, specifically in Championship cricket.
Standing in as captain for injured Steven Croft for an early-season win over Somerset at Emirates Old Trafford, when the hosts recovered from 109 all out in the first innings to win by 164 runs, was a precursor to his permanent appointment almost eight months later.
Livingstone hit 68 and 168 in the match and later posted a brilliant double century (his first) in another home win over Warwickshire in August, 224 off 325 balls.
He finished the summer with 803 Championship runs from eleven matches and again toured with the Lions in the winter for their training camp in Australia.
After a lean 2018 in Championship cricket, Livingstone handed over the Lancashire captaincy to Dane Vilas and then contributed 599 runs to the promotion-winning campaign in 2019.
In July 2021, he crashed a brilliant 103 for England in a T20 defeat against Pakistan at Trent Bridge - his career best score in that format.
In summer 2022, on a short ODI tour of the Netherlands, he crashed a blistering 66 not out off 22 balls, including a fifty off 17 - England’s fastest even one-day half-century.
Following the T20 World Cup triumph in Australia in November, he was selected for a Test debut in Pakistan the following month.
He hasn’t actually played a first-class match since then, owing much to challenges surrounding his recovery from the knee injury he suffered in Rawalpindi. He was sidelined for all cricket around the world during the first half of 2023, for example.
But he did play 13 matches in the 2023 Vitality Blast, captaining the Lightning in the absence of club captain Keaton Jennings, who missed out with a hamstring injury.
He is Lancashire’s second leading all-time T20 run-scorer with 2,226 - and in early 2024 went beyond 6,000 career T20 runs for all teams. Towards the end of 2023, he also notched his 100th career wicket in the same format.