The Analysis: A costly dismissal from Liam Livingstone

ELIZABETH BOTCHERBY: Discussing England's performance against South Africa at Lord's, George Dobell wrote: "England are going to have to learn to adapt when conditions demand it." And the same goes for Livingstone

Liam Livingstone is renowned as a power-hitter.

Prior to this evening's outing at Edgbaston, he had 4,917 runs in 198 career T20 appearances, 1,806 coming via sixes and a further 1,352 from fours. His strike rate in the format was 146.47.

Since the start of 2021, he has over 2,100 runs, a strike rate in excess of 154 and 17 50-plus knocks in T20 cricket. A player getting better with age.

He was at his scintillating best in last season's edition of The Hundred, scoring 348 runs at a strike rate of 178.46, and started the 2022 tournament brightly – an unbeaten 51 (32) and 47 (48) against Trent Rockets the pick of his performances.

Against Northern Superchargers, however, his cheap dismissal proved costly for his side.

Chasing 170, Phoenix made a solid start, with Miles Hammond and Will Smeed putting on 45 runs for the first wicket before the latter was dismissed for 15 off the 24th ball. They were around 10 runs behind their visitors at the same stage but boundaries were flowing, there were batters still to come in the line-up, and the equation was a perfectly chasable 125 off 76 - there was no need to panic.

^{Livingstone during his brief stay in the middle [David Rogers/Getty Images]}

Livingstone walked out at No.3 and ran a single off the final ball of the powerplay. He struck his next delivery (ball 27) for a fortuitous four, Dwayne Bravo narrowly missing out on a fantastic boundary catch, before eating up a dot ball from David Willey.

He opted to go big off the 29th ball, taking on the short side of the ground and slogging his England teammate towards long on. Many in the crowd were probably already raising both arms in anticipation of a six, instead it fell short and into the hands of Harry Brook: Livingstone out for five off four.

You could argue it was still too early to panic at this point. After all, Birmingham Phoenix had Moeen Ali, Matthew Wade, Chris Benjamin and Benny Howell to come.

But his wicket, coming hot on the heels of Smeed's, tipped the momentum back in Northern Superchargers' favour and it's quite telling that a further three wickets fell within 25 balls of Livingstone's departure.

It's also not the first time that his batting has appeared to lack that final, crucial piece of maturity. Take the ODI against India at Emirates Old Trafford back in July, for example. Yes, he made a positive 27 (31) but he failed to kick on, instead getting caught up in a flurry of sixes and falling into the trap set by Hardik Pandya. Keep swinging, the India bowler tempted him. He obliged and in attempting to dispatch the ball into the building site he picked out a prowling Ravindra Jadeja in the deep.

Discussing England's performance against South Africa at Lord's, George Dobell wrote: "England are going to have to learn to adapt when conditions demand it." In short, they can't play Bazball all the time.

And the same goes for Livingstone. He is by no means the only player guilty of this - getting caught in the deep is a la mode for England batters this summer - and it's fair to say none of his Birmingham Phoenix teammates covered themselves in glory, but sometimes he needs to stop for a moment and think.

Boundaries are his currency and he is well rewarded for them, but did tonight's situation demand fireworks from the off? Not really.

Instead, Birmingham Phoenix required a well-constructed innings characterised by brisk scoring and calculated risks to successfully chase down a steep but by no means impossible target, a Dawid Malan knock if you will. And that's something Livingstone will have to learn.