After a break of almost five months, Barrow's Liam Livingstone will finally get back to playing cricket again when Lancashire begin their truncated county cricket campaign.

The season will finally start on August 1 with the Bob Willis Trophy, a competition named in honour of the former England captain who died last year.

The 18 first-class counties have been split into three groups, with Lancashire in the North group alongside Durham, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire.

Each team will play each other once, with the two group winners that gain the most points from their five matches meeting in a five-day final at Lord's, starting on September 30.

Lancashire's first match will be away at Leicestershire, with the venue still to be confirmed, before a trip to Durham's Riverside ground that gets under way on August 8.

With Old Trafford being heavily used by England this summer, their one match at the Manchester venue will be against Nottinghamshire from August 15.

Their match against Roses rivals Yorkshire at Headingley from August 22 could have a big bearing on who qualifies from the group before the final fixture against Derbyshire at Liverpool.

Livingstone last played just before the escalation of the coronavirus pandemic, when he featured for Peshawar Zalmi in the Pakistan Super League.