When Jos Buttler announced his side at the Ageas Bowl today (September 10), there was a surprise in the top five.

With Dawid Malan away following the birth of his second child and Jason Roy still struggling with a back spasm, Liam Livingstone was down to come in at No.5. Only on one occasion has Livingstone batted at five before in an ODI. He scored four against the Netherlands in June last year.

The decision (or necessity) to bump him up was enough to raise a few eyebrows. In his short ODI career, Livingstone has been used as a late-innings basher ready to come in for preferably no longer than the last 15 overs and hit several enormous sixes before being caught on the boundary. An excellent finisher but he had not yet really shown the necessary adaptability for an ODI middler order batter.

Before today, the most balls Livingstone had ever faced in an ODI was 40 at Cardiff two days ago. Despite that, in all but one of his innings where he’s reached double-figures, he’s hit at least one six. His role is clear – score runs and don’t hang about.

It’s understandable then, that when push came to shove and England were 8-3, with Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root and Ben Stokes back in the hutch, the order was ripped up, and Buttler walked out to sort out the mess. That’s his job.

More indicative of how England view Livingstone is that when Harry Brook was out and England 28-4, Moeen also strolled out ahead of him. It made sense too, favouring England’s recent Test no. 3 to steady the ship over a man who has previously been more of a finisher than a stablizer.

However, when Livingstone did come in after Buttler inside-edged Mitchell Santner onto his leg stump off the first ball of the 13th over, the narrative of his capabilities completely flipped. He blocked out his first four balls before picking up a single off the last of the over to keep the strike. From the next, he scored his first boundary and saw off five dots from Tim Southee.

Along with Moeen, Livingstone set about restoring calm to the innings while ensuring the run-rate stayed high enough to push on later. There were the trademark powerful hits into the leg-side and down the ground as he reached the slowest of his three ODI fifties, but it took him 73 balls to hit his first six. By that point, England were 203-6 with two overs left of the reduced innings and within reach of a genuinely competitive score.

Livingstone finished unbeaten on 95 off 78 balls. He took England from 55-5 and in dire straits, death knells being readied for their World Cup defence, to 226-7. It was the most important innings of his international career and one with implications for how England can address the imbalance in their World Cup XI.

Only Jos Buttler (121) and Moeen Ali (102) have made a higher individual score from No.7 for England in ODIs than Liam Livingstone’s unbeaten 95* today 🔥

A brilliant knock to rescue the innings from 55-5 🙌#ENGvNZ pic.twitter.com/ZWaDANT4MW

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) September 10, 2023

With Stokes no longer able to provide them with a frontline bowler batting in the top six, England have been struggling to find an order that gives them enough with both bat and ball. The route they’ve gone down to fix that, has been to have one of Moeen or Livingstone batting at six, with one or two of Sam Curran, Chris Woakes and David Willey below them in the order.

However, the role in ODI cricket does not fit either Livingstone’s or Moeen’s particular skill set. A No.6 has to be able to play whatever role the situation demands, whether that’s coming in at 28-4 as Moeen did today, or at 300-4 with ten overs left to bludgeon past 400. You have to be able to be both the stabiliser and the finisher.

It’s the hardest role in the side to do well, and it’s why a freak-ish talent like Buttler has been best placed in the past to play that part. But England’s balance doesn’t allow him to do that anymore. Thus, it’s fallen to Moeen or Livingstone.

More than half of Moeen’s ODI career has been spent at No.7, and he’s played more innings as an opener than at No.6. His average from 11 innings at No.6 is 29.8 with one half-century. He hasn’t scored a century in any position in the format since 2017 and, while he played an important role in stabilising England’s innings today, it wasn’t him who kicked on.

That Livingstone did doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the one who should fill that role for England, especially with their top order looking so vulnerable. But it does mean that he’s capable of more than what he’s shown in the past, and can be trusted to read a situation more than he currently is.

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