LANCASHIRE’S Liam Livingstone expects the Red Rose county to be all the better next season for a year of experience in the County Championship top-flight.

Livingstone, 23, made his breakthrough into the Lancs team as they earned survival in Division One on the final day of the season.

He was one of a number of youngsters blooded by coach Ashley Giles who, as a team, briefly topped the table after six games and battled gamely throughout the year to stay up.

Along with the likes of Haseeb Hameed – currently on tour with England in India – and Saqib Mahmood, Livingstone, who scored two centuries and six fifties during the campaign, feels he learnt a lot from 2016 and is ready to take that into next year.

“We’ve got a young squad at Lancashire, but we’ve all got that season of experience now and it’s no longer an excuse for us that we have a young squad,” said the Barrow CC product, who is part of the England Lions squad this winter.

“We have to go on. We’re now established in the league and we have to move on again.”

He added: “At the start of the year, our main goal was to stay in Division One – that was the one main goal for the season.

“People were forgetting that we had managed to be top of the Championship after six games. But, because we had played some good cricket early on, it doesn’t matter when you win your games or when you get your points, as long as you have enough points to stay up. That was our main goal.

“We’re a young squad and we’re learning, but the best way to learn is to be out there experiencing it. We will only have gained from those last few weeks of the season where we stayed up.

“We played some tough cricket against some tough teams, but we never really got bullied by any of the big teams. We went toe-to-toe with teams with a lot more experience than we have.”