HAMPSHIRE all-rounder Liam Dawson will face South Africa in the first Investec Test at Lord’s today - 27 years after his dad won the National Village Cup final there.

Dawson, who made his Test debut against India in Chennai, will make his home debut after getting the nod ahead of Middlesex seamer Toby Roland-Jones.

Root, named as Alastair Cook’s successor five months ago, will lead an England side featuring two spin bowlers - Dawson and Moeen Ali - in a Lord’s Test for the first time since 1993.

Dawson has only played three matches at Lord’s before but it is a ground his family knows well. 

Dad Andy won the National Village Cup final there with Goatacre CC in 1990, when a five-month old Liam watched from the stands.

“His grandmother brought him down in a carry cot on the supporters’ coach,” recalled Andy Dawson, who made an unbeaten 12 as Goatacre made 267-5, before beating Dunstall by 50 runs.

“The man of the match was a guy called Kevin Iles, who made one of the fastest ever hundreds ever scored at Lord’s, but was on 99 when I went out to bat,” continued Dawson snr who, like David Steele against Australia in 1975, took the wrong staircase on his way out to bat.
“Somehow I ended up in a cupboard!” he revealed in a Daily Echo interview in 2009.

 “All of a sudden I thought ‘where am I going?!’ I knew something wasn’t quite right when I bumped into an old lady with a broom! She showed me the way back to the pavilion.

“It seemed to take forever. Luckily I wasn’t timed out but I had to sprint out to the middle as soon as I got through the swing gate!

“Kevin asked where I’d been and I had to explain that I’d got lost! We still laugh about that to this day.”

Liam also has happy memories from his first three appearances at Lord’s, all one-day matches for Hampshire.

He took a match-winning 4-45 there against Middlesex as an 18 year-old and finished on the winning side in the 2009 Friends Provident Trophy final against Sussex and the 2012 Clydesdale Bank 40 final against Warwickshire. 

Now, having missed Hampshire’s County Championship match at Lord’s two years ago, his first Test appearance on home soil will also be his first first-class match at the home of cricket.

It will be watched by many more than the 10,000 present for his dad’s big day.

“I don’t like to make Liam sound like a superstar but we used to have more than a thousand people watching us when we got to the latter stages of the National Village Championship and most of them used to go and watch him in the nets before our game started!” continued 54 year-old Andy. 

“He had a cricket bat as soon as he could walk and spent most of his childhood in our dressing room.

"I don’t like to make Liam sound like a superstar but we used to have more than a thousand people watching us when we got to the latter stages of the National Village Cup and most of them used to go and watch him in the nets before our game started!”