Mr Livingstone I presume

Posted by Tony Hutton

Leeds/Bradford University v Lancashire 2nd XI (Weetwood, Leeds)

Having decided to forsake another day of back to back T20 games at Headingley yesterday, I turned up at Weetwood expecting to see the University play the Lancashire Academy side, as advertised on the county website and elsewhere.
However as happened a few weeks ago with Durham, the second eleven turned up instead of the Academy. In truth it seemed a mixture of the two.

Howard Clayton, the University scorer, as usual provided me with the two teams and Lancashire looked to have a pretty strong side captained by Stephen Parry, including Cheetham who has opened the bowling for the first team, Aaron Lilley, the spin bowling all rounder from Delph and Dobcross and the South African batsman Agathagelou. Howard Clayton proudly boasted that he could spell his name correctly.

With showers threatening, play did not start until noon, only a quarter of an hour late, and Lancashire batted. At the start of play the two spectators present were myself and Alan from Pudsey, who is in fact a Lancastrian. We sat downstairs under the pavilion and were joined by Lancashire's number three batsman, Liam Livingstone, while all his teammates remained upstairs on the balcony.

Young Mr Livingstone is only 17 but his name was well known to me, having seen him I think for Cumbria Under 15s at the New Rover ground, just across the road, some years ago. He scored runs then and I had heard his name mentioned as one of the best prospects at the Lancashire Academy. He confirmed that he still played for his home town club, Barrow, on Saturdays in the Northern League and knew one of Alan's relations who plays for Carnforth. He is now also playing for Cumberland in the Minor Counties competition and would probably miss the Champions League final on TV on Saturday night, as after playing for Barrow he has to travel to Jesmond, Newcastle to join his Cumberland teammates for Sunday's game.

When the first wicket fell, he was inside the pavilion, but when he came out to collect his bat and gloves, we told him that the man with the long name had been given out lbw to one that kept low and to watch out for the leg spinner, Tom Craddock. Alan encouraged him by saying stay there till about four o'clock.

Going in with the score at 39-1, he had some luck in the early part of his innings on a wicket which is sometimes unpredictable, but played the innings of the day and had scored sixty out of 178-5 when he out in the 38th over. He hit only two fours and one six, but ran well between the wickets and is certainly one to watch for the future. He seems a very pleasant and sensible lad.

Thanks to some late hitting from the tailenders, particularly Lilley who made 26 off only ten balls, Lancashire made 276-7 in their fifty overs, which looked a challenging target for the University side. The crowd had more than doubled in size by now to five, with the arrival of Brian Senior and a couple of player's relations.

With the weather always threatening the University added 40 for the first wicket in only eight overs, but when the first change bowler, Bailey, came on he took a wicket with his first ball and another soon afterwards. Lilley also chipped in with two wickets and the University were 64-4 after fifteen overs when the serious rain of the day arrived and brought proceedings to a premature end.

With a rare cricket free day available to me today, I did a little more research on young Mr Livingstone and discovered that not only was he All Out Cricket Magazine's young cricketer of the year in 2009, but had been made captain of Barrow cricket club a couple of weeks ago. Surely he must be the youngest club captain in the country at only seventeen. He has also been involved in the England Under 16s set up at Loughborough.

So yet another name to add to the growing list of very young cricketers we have seen in recent weeks. Barnie Gibson of Yorkshire and Harvey Hosein of Derbyshire, the two wicket keepers, immediately spring to mind, but there are many others looking for fame and fortune. We will look forward to seeing them all progress in the future.