Liam Livingstone during the first ODI between India and England in Nagpur

A slight shimmy down the pitch, a massive swipe through the air, and the sound of the ball nestling in KL Rahul’s gloves after a small scratch of bat. Liam Livingstone turned on his heel and walked past the celebrating India fielders as the sixth wicket ticked up on the England scorecard blazed across the big screen.

It was the kind of shot and dismissal that Livingstone has left littered in his wake during his international career. If he made a connection, it would have gone to the moon, but, instead, a tiny nick went five metres back into waiting gloves.

That Livingstone hasn’t been able to deliver the kind of ODI numbers which would put him beyond reproach in the format is a frustration to an audience who have seen him clear roofs at the Gabba and Headingley. The potential he offers to win a match in the space of a few overs is what's made him so attractive to England for so long. But the context to his dismissal today, with a new coach watching on, youngsters waiting at the door and after a 2024 turnaround the breathed new life into his international career, makes that frustration stand out clearer than ever.

Speaking on the half-time commentary on TNT, Matt Prior said: “He’s played a lot of cricket now and you think, can you put your ego to one side and actually make good decisions under pressure?”

That tension, between taking the opposition down and knocking them around, has been Livingstone’s downfall. After facing five dot balls in his last six, Livingstone decided the way to expel that pressure was to try and hit Rana out of the park. In comparison to Jacob Bethell, who faced five dots from his first six balls at the crease, the difference between both the action and effect was marked. On his seventh ball, Bethell played out another dot to Kuldeep Yadav, and then another when he came on strike in the next over. The first boundary he hit in his innings came off his 28th ball, latching onto a shorter one from Hardik Pandya and dispatching it over fine leg.

Bethell came to England’s attention last summer in the first phase of their post-T20 World Cup re-boot, to do a job similar to the one Livingstone has been in charge of over the last two years - quick runs in the lower middle-order, and a handy mix of spin. Had Jos Buttler not been injured out of Bethell’s debut series against Australia, Livingstone would not have regained the position following missing out during the re-vamp. Regardless of the job he’s been picked for, it was clear in Nagpur that Bethell is developing the kind of versatility that has the potential to outpace what Livingstone has so far brought to the same role.

He reached his fifty, a second in nine matches, off 62 balls with three fours and one six. When he was out four balls later, he finished his innings with a strike-rate of 79.68. While, in the end, not a match-winning innings, it was the one anchoring relief amid the same kind of collapse seen in almost every single match on this tour. Only Buttler faced more balls in England's innings than Bethell.

Comparatively to Bethell, all of Livingstone’s ODI half-centuries have come at a strike rate of 121 or higher. He’s been out between 20 and 50 with a strike rate of less than 100 four times in his career and has only faced more balls in an innings than Bethell did today twice.

Having forced his way back into the ODI reckoning last summer through T20 form, he scored a brutal 62* at Lord’s which preceded a dominant win. He then hit a magnificent century in Antigua after coming in at 63-2, which propelled England over the line in a tough chase. The move up to No.5 and the extra responsibility of captaining the side in Buttler’s absence seemed to pave the way for the second half of Livingstone’s career to deliver on the promise of the first. However, the shot he played in Nagpur, and to an extent his dismissals in the T20I series, raise questions over whether that corner has actually been turned.

Bethell was quieter in the ODI series in the West Indies, but did score two fast fifties in the T20I leg. What he’s shown in Nagpur, and in New Zealand after making his Test debut, is an ability to adapt both across formats and across situations. He's not yet, and potentially never will be, the destructive force that Livingstone can be, and his 50-over career so far consists of 25 matches, nine of which have been for England. But at the stage England are currently at, miles away from their swashbuckling 2019 best and without the luxuries it afforded them, Bethell's mixture of ice and fire looks more stabilizing amid their chaos than Livingstone’s inferno.

With a new coach watching on from the balcony, and at the start of a new cycle, that potentially matters now for Livingstone more than ever.

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