Liam Livingstone welcomes England Twenty20 call against South Africa
Tuesday 13 June 2017 11:44, UK
Liam Livingstone is excited by the freedom England are playing with after receiving a call-up for the Twenty20 squad.
The 23-year-old Lancashire and England Lions all-rounder was told of his first full call-up by national selector James Whitaker on the third day of the County Championship match against Middlesex.
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"It was obviously a very nice moment for me and I'm just looking forward to next week now," he said.
"Your performances get you picked and it's a great environment in which to be playing at the moment. I'm guessing that the senior squad is pretty similar to the Lions in that you get a lot of freedom and that's very suited to the way I play my cricket. It's very exciting.
"It's nice to be going into the full squad with the confidence of having scored runs in Lions cricket behind me. There's a group of lads that are coming through at the moment and it's very exciting times for English cricket when you see the way the senior team are playing in the Champions Trophy.
"From your very first day hitting a cricket ball, playing for England is what you want to do and it will be a very proud moment. You want to play all three formats at the very highest level for as long as you can but I'm still a work in progress."
Livingstone was also keen to stress he had not spent time thinking about playing for England since his performances began to draw attention last year.
"I just want to do my best for Lancashire and if this came, it came," he said. "I was never thinking about it happening.
"There's still a lot of hard work to be done but I hope I can move up into that environment and keep up the hard work. I've also tried not to change myself very much and I just hope I can go in and be the same as I am in county cricket."
