Two phone calls, lasting a minute each. That, claims Liam Livingstone, is the sum total of his contact with England’s management since his most recent international appearance 12 months ago.
Livingstone was dropped from England’s white-ball teams last summer after a slump in form early last year as they lost 10 out of 11 games across a tour to India and the Champions Trophy. He accuses England’s management of a lack of “respect” in shirking “difficult conversations” since, and believes he is unlikely to play international cricket again under this regime.
Across a wide-ranging interview with ESPNcricinfo, Livingstone makes several scathing claims about the England environment under head coach Brendon McCullum and managing director Rob Key. These include that:
He was told he “cares too much” when asking coaches for advice
“No-one cares” about players outside of an inner circle
Last year’s Champions Trophy was “the worst experience” of his career
The role he was given was “a waste” of his potentialLivingstone is speaking after a morning’s training at Emirates Old Trafford ahead of his flight to India. He may have been discarded by England for the past year, but his Rs 13 crore (£1.06 million) contract with Sunrisers Hyderabad indicates that he remains in high demand at the IPL, and he has had a typically busy winter on the franchise circuit.But after playing in five consecutive ICC events from 2021-25, including England’s successful T20 World Cup campaign in 2022, he followed the most recent edition from home. “I didn’t miss it one bit,” he insists, speaking days after England’s semi-final exit to eventual champions India. “There wasn’t any part of me that was wishing I was playing in that team, to be honest.”
Arguably Livingstone’s finest international innings came while batting at No.5, and captaining England in West Indies•Getty Images
It is a startling admission from a player with 100 international caps across formats – and one who was centrally contracted until September – but it underlines the extent to which Livingstone feels his relationships with England’s management have deteriorated. He turned 32 last summer and believes he is close to his peak, but that an international recall is unlikely.
Livingstone says that McCullum phoned him last May to tell him he had been dropped for England’s home series against West Indies: “I don’t think it [the call] would have reached a minute. I asked why; they said they wanted to try someone else. That was off Baz. Wrighty [outgoing selector Luke Wright] didn’t reach out, and Brooky [captain Harry Brook] sent me a text.
“That probably sums that group up as a collective. Keysy said nothing – [he] said I’ll speak to you in the summer. I actually rang him one day, and he said he was busy at a Test camp at Loughborough. And then I didn’t hear off him until the end of September.
“That was a bit of an eye-opening experience about the group and the regime: if you’re in, you’re in, and if you’re not in, no-one cares about you. That put my mind at ease that my cricket was going to be more enjoyable going forward.”
When Livingstone said in an interview with talkSPORT last summer that he didn’t know where he stood with England, Key responded on the Sky Cricket podcast by inviting him to call him, saying: “I don’t know if he’s got a phone, if he’s allowed to ring… If you want to find out where you are, you’ve got my number, mate.”
They exchanged one more brief phone call in late September, with Key informing Livingstone that his central contract – which expired a week later – would not be renewed. When Livingstone asked about the lack of communication over the summer, he claims that Key told him he had “100 more important things to do than speak to you”.
The pair have not spoken since, though England insist that Livingstone – like all players – will still be considered for selection if he performs in domestic and franchise cricket. England also say that while Livingstone was in their set-up, he was regularly told that scoring runs consistently was his best route to a permanent spot.
Livingstone was an IPL winner with RCB last year, and was a big-money signing for SRH in December’s auction•Associated Press
“I still believe I’m one of the best players in white-ball cricket in England,” Livingstone says. “Just because I’m not playing for England, because of a couple of people’s opinions, it doesn’t mean that I’m not good enough to do it.”
Livingstone was not the only England player to underperform in early 2025, but his form did not demand retention. He made 43 off 25 balls in their only win in the first 11 games of McCullum’s tenure as white-ball coach, but struggled to make an impact in their 4-1 T20I series defeat to India and managed just 88 runs in six ODI innings, including the Champions Trophy.
He describes that tournament as “the worst experience I’ve had playing cricket” and says that when he asked England’s coaches for advice, he was told not to worry so much. “I was asking for help and pretty much all I got was that I care too much and I need to chill out a little bit, and everything will take care of itself,” he says.
“Where I come from, it’s not an easy route to get to play for your country,” Livingstone adds, referring to his formative years in Barrow-in-Furness. “For someone to keep telling you that you care too much is… it’s probably a bit way off the mark, to be honest, with what you go through and parents sacrificing so much for years on end to get you to realise your dream.
“When things don’t go right, of course you’re going to care; if I didn’t care, then I probably wouldn’t want to play the sport. I thought I had a really good summer, leading into the winter when we went to the West Indies. Obviously things didn’t go well in India and Pakistan, but they weren’t going well for anyone.
“I was just trying to ask for help to get better: what do they see that isn’t going right? You’d hit a couple out of the middle of the bat and they’d go, ‘Great, you found it. Let’s go back to the hotel.’ It wasn’t the most enjoyable experience for me. If you’re asking me about my hopes going forward, all I would say is I want to enjoy playing cricket, and I’m not going to do something that isn’t enjoyable.”
At the end of the day, I don’t want to be someone that’s a sixth bowler and batting at No. 7. I feel like it’s a waste of my talent
Livingstone on his limited role within the England set-up
He felt like he had started to address a common criticism: that he failed to get England over the line under pressure. “If I go through that summer, you’ve got Cardiff against Australia, where I got 90-odd [87] not out; Lord’s, where I smacked Mitchell Starc all around there at the end; the West Indies, where I chased down that total. That’s three that I can roll off straightaway.
“One of my frustrations with playing for England was whenever I went up the order, I did really well. And then the big boys would come back and I was always back down at No. 7… At the end of the day, I don’t want to be someone that’s a sixth bowler and batting at No. 7. I feel like it’s a waste of my talent, but that’s only my opinion.”
Ironically, it was in that very role that Livingstone’s replacement Will Jacks emerged as England’s standout performer at the T20 World Cup – winning four Player-of-the-Match awards despite his own preference to bat at the top of the order. Though selection is always subjective, Livingstone himself could have few complaints at being dropped when Brook took over as captain, even though he might argue that he could easily have replicated Tom Banton’s output in the middle order.
Liam Livingstone and Will Jacks made their Test debuts together in Pakistan in 2022. The latter has now taken over the former’s role in white-ball cricket•Getty Images
Instead, his primary frustration is with England’s lack of communication since he was dropped, not least given he was under contract for most of last year, and he draws a sharp contrast with the way he feels he has been treated by Royal Challengers Bengaluru – his most recent IPL franchise – and by England in the last 12 months.
Mo Bobat (director of cricket) and Andy Flower (head coach) both called him directly to explain their decision to release him before December’s auction in detail, and left things on good enough terms that Livingstone signed for them at London Spirit a few weeks later. “It showed me that there’s two people doing it the right way,” he says.
“The best person I ever had was Morgs [Eoin Morgan],” Livingstone adds. “It was very chilled out. It was very relaxed. But everyone was humble about it, and you knew that when you turned up to cricket, it was pretty serious. Everybody knew that there were players performing around county cricket, and if you didn’t do your job, the next one was in. It doesn’t seem the same way at the moment.”
There is clearly no love lost, but the only way Livingstone will force his way back into England contention is through weight of runs, starting in India later this month. His first match for Sunrisers, his new franchise, will be against RCB at the Chinnaswamy in Bengaluru, and he is targeting a second successive IPL title after winning the tournament last year.
“Hopefully, I can have a season like the season I had in my first year at Punjab [Kings, in 2022] where I felt like I was playing really well and won loads of games from No. 4,” he says. “[The IPL] is a very different experience to anything else throughout the year – it’s a long time away from home – but if you give it everything you’ve got, it can repay you very nicely.”
He will then return to Lancashire, where he has signed a fresh three-year contract, for the T20 Blast, and makes clear that he feels “valued” by the club that he has represented throughout his professional career. “Coming back and playing here always feels like I’m coming home,” he says.
“I love what I do: I love going out and playing cricket, and my motivation when I wake up in the morning and go to training is that 10-year-old kid that was playing in the garden, however many years ago, who would have given up everything to be in the position I’m in now. Just because I’m not playing for England doesn’t mean that I’m not still trying to get to the top of my game.”
Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98