IPL 2019: Ben Stokes pulls Liam Livingstone’s legs while welcoming him to RR

Former Indian Premier League (IPL) champions Rajasthan Royals (RR) have a liking for English cricketers and they continued with their preference in the recently held auction for the 2019 edition by picking Lancashire batsman Liam Livingstone. The 25-year-old player was signed in for Rs 50 lakh, his base price, and given his reputation as a future face of England cricket, Livingstone’s choice could have just strengthened RR’s prospects in the upcoming tournament.

Livingstone has been a handy cricketer with abilities both with the bat and ball. In first-class cricket, his highest score is 224 and has an impressive average of 40-plus. In T20s, he has a hundred as well with a big strike rate of 145 plus.

The man has already played a couple of T20Is against South Africa last year and is expected to play a bigger role for the Three Lions in the days to come. He has also captained Lancashire to reach the semi-finals of the T20 Blast as he made 318 runs in seven innings, including scoring the century he has off just 49 balls, against Derbyshire.

Livingstone will join other England players at Royals

While representing RR in IPL 2019, Livingstone will join fellow Englishmen Jos Buttler, who is also from Lancashire, besides ace all-rounder Ben Stokes and another future prospect for England Jofra Archer, who excelled with the ball last season.

Stokes came out on Twitter on Tuesday to congratulate Livingstone after the latter expressed his excitement over joining the Royals for the upcoming season. The all-rounder said jokingly that he would have to put up with the bloke but didn’t forget to mention that it was a well-deserved opportunity for the latter.

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ have to put up with this bloke for a while….congrats pal very well deserved 👍 https://t.co/v9vjkDYr0h

— Ben Stokes (@benstokes38) December 18, 2018

Among the Royals’ buys in this year’s auction, the most expensive is left-arm bowler Jaydev Unadkat who was bought for Rs 8.4 crore (the same bowler was bought for Rs 11.5 crore in the auction of IPL 2018 earlier this year) who was also the highest –paid along with mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy who was bagged by KXIP.

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