Liam Naylor on turning down Bruce Springsteen to answer Scotland call

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

Liam Naylor took the good news/bad news approach when telling dad, Phil, that he was returning to the Scotland squad after a two-year absence. The downside was that his old man would need to find someone else to take his ticket for the Bruce Springsteen gig they were meant to be going to together at Anfield this week. That, however, was a small price to pay for the chance to reignite his international aspirations.
'It's good to be back,' said the Liverpool-born batter. 'I didn't know what to expect as all I knew was I was going to get a phone call but didn't know whether it was going to be, 'you're in' or 'you're not in'.
'Then I saw Steve Snell [Cricket Scotland's Head of Performance] calling me. And he just said, 'you've scored plenty of runs and bashed the door down and there are only so many times we can say no to you!'
'I thought I would surprise my dad with the news by telling him first of all that he was going to have to sell my ticket for Bruce Springsteen. And when he started to act all disappointed I told him why. And then at that point he was delighted for me.
'So, I'm buzzing to be back involved. I'll try see Springsteen another time. I'm much happier being around the lads and back in the squad.'
Naylor's return for the forthcoming twin series against the Netherlands and Nepal – the first a 50-over mini-tournament at Forfarshire, the second a clutch of T20 matches at Clydesdale – has been long overdue.
The former under-19 cap's full debut came against Namibia in Nepal at the start of 2023, the series in which Scotland clinched the previous edition of the Cricket World Cup League 2 tournament they are again deeply immersed in.
That looked to be the start of things but instead the 23-year-old has had to be patient until the glut of runs he was chalking up for club side RH Corstorphine became too vast to ignore.
'It's probably not a surprise to me that it's been a while since my last cap,' he admits honestly. 'After the Nepal series in 2023 I moved to Watsonians and didn't really have the greatest of years.
'So last year and this year it was just about trying to get back scoring runs again with RHC, the Scotland A team and things like going down to play for MCC recently against Nepal.
'And it's going alright. Some of the lads were like, 'you surely can't start as well as you did last year'. And I probably haven't but I'm still pleased. It's just been about backing yourself and narrowing it down to make the game as simple as possible. If the ball is there to be hit, then try and hit it.'
Nepal has featured regularly on Naylor's international journey so far and he is looking forward to more jousts with them in the weeks ahead.
'Nepal was a cool place and I'll always have good memories because I made my Scotland debut there,' he adds. 'It's definitely one of my favourite countries in the world and I would love to go back. They seem to have fans everywhere. At that MCC game there must have been 70 or so. They seem mad for cricket.'
The same can't be said for much of Liverpool where, like Scotland, the sport tends to live in football's shadow. Naylor, though, was undeterred, especially with his local club based just down the road from where he was brought up.
'The reason I got into cricket was because my first club was Alder Sports Club which was a 30-second walk from my house,' he reveals. 'I'm pretty sure I just walked past it one Friday night when junior training was on and I was like, 'I want to do that'.
'I started going, loved it and started watching cricket on the telly. And ever since then, yeah, it's been cricket, cricket, cricket. Obviously it's not big in Liverpool when you're growing up. But at that time, I played every sport going and so I gave cricket a go, too. And cricket and football were the ones that stuck.
'It's probably like in Scotland – there are more people who are into cricket in Liverpool than you might think. They just don't always want to admit it!'
Naylor's Scottish connection comes from mum, Marie, who hails from Campbeltown.
'I was there for Easter and try and get across as much as possible,' he adds. 'My friends in Edinburgh love going too just because there are a few golf courses ranked in the top 50 in the UK. I'm now a member of Machrihanish and the lads are always asking if I can get them on.
'But my mum was ecstatic when I got called up for Scotland. The funny thing is she can never watch me play. She'll sit there and look at the floor, whilst my dad does laps of the pitch! But they were buzzing when I got back in the squad.'
His old man still jokingly blames Naylor for ending his own cricket career. 'As I came through and started playing senior cricket, my dad started playing with me on a Sunday and then he became the Sunday captain when I was about 16.
'I remember batting with him one time. He called him through for a quick single but fell and dislocated his shoulder. He hasn't played cricket since – and he's never let me forget about it!'