Liam Livingstone has emerged as one of the cleanest, most fearsome batsmen in IPL 2022. While his incredible talent was always known, over the past year and more, it has been further utilized by the different teams he has been playing for.
It had started when he turned up for the inaugural season of The Hundred and took the competition by storm, smashing 348 runs in 9 innings at an average of 58 and strike rate of 178, helping his side Birmingham Phoenix reach the final.
A thrilling T20I century against Pakistan sealed his spot in England’s eleven for the T20 World Cup, where, although Liam Livingstone got to bat only thrice wherein he scored 46 runs at a strike rate of 158, his effectiveness as a spinner with the dexterity of bowling both leg-spin and off-spin came to England’s help.
Further, it was a testament to his immense talent and reputation that Punjab Kings shelled out 11.5 crore for Livingstone despite his poor record in the two seasons before this year – Liam Livingstone had scored only 112 runs in 9 IPL matches before this season. He repaid Punjab’s faith and vindicated the money spent on him by thwacking two consecutive fifties, against CSK and GT, 60 off 32 and 64 off 27 respectively.
However, the Lancashire cricketer was criticised for not having game awareness in both of his innings. Both times, Livingstone threw it away after his fifty; in fact, on both occasions, he got out with a decent amount of overs left to bat in the innings, and fans and experts reckoned he could have batted through instead of being caught out.
However, one factor that has been learned about Liam Livingstone is that he doesn’t gives two hoots about what anyone says about him and his gung-ho batting style.
Last September, when Livingstone was in rage everywhere in England and on the lips of every cricket fan, the all-rounder had said that at times he had received flak about his attitude. However, he backs his power-hitting and six-smacking penchant to take on any bowler in the world, no matter the conditions or situation. And he certainly wouldn’t change his method by opinion of other people.
