LIAM Dawson will be the only teenager involved in tomorrow’s Friends Provident Trophy final - but he already knows all about Lord’s success.

The Hampshire all-rounder, from Calne, won the man-of-the-match award in his first appearance at headquarters after hitting 45 and taking a career-best 4 for 45 in a Natwest Pro40 win against Middlesex last August - exactly 18 years after his dad Andy won the National Village Championship with Goatacre CC.

A five-month-old Liam was at Lord’s in his nappy, aged five months, when his dad helped the Wiltshire village beat Dunstall CC in August 1990.

"Someone was telling me the other day that there can’t be too many father and sons who have both played in a Lord’s final, one as an amateur and the other as a professional," said Andy, a 46-year-old roofer.

"The night before was the first my wife Bev and I had spent away from Liam as we stayed at a hotel down the road from Lord’s with the rest of the players and their partners.

"His grandmother brought him down in a carry cot on the supporters' coach the next day!"

Although Dawson snr left Lord’s with a winner’s medal, his big day did not go entirely to plan. "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," he recalled.

Like David Steele against Australia in 1975 and Peter Siddle last week, Dawson snr took the wrong staircase on his way out to bat.

"Somehow I ended up in a cupboard!" he said. "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 the **** I’d been and I had to explain that I’d got lost! We still laugh about that to this day."

Dawson snr contributed 12 not out as Goatacre made 267 for 5 from 40 overs, before taking a wicket with the new ball in the 50-run win.

"Goatacre also played in the 1988 village final and I was lucky enough to play for them at Lord’s in my first season," he said.

"We were treated like Test players, we even had dressing room attendants. We scored what was a record total at the time and there was a good crowd.

"Kevin’s was a fantastic knock, one of the best I’ve ever seen. It was unbelievable, and by such a humble chap.

"It was Dunstall’s first year in the competition, they had Colin Boulton, the former Derby County goalkeeper playing for them and we got on so well we arranged an annual fixture for the next few years."

There were nearly 10,000 at Lord’s for Dawson snr’s big day. He will be part of a far bigger crowd tomorrow with wife Bev, Liam’s brother Brad (a Wiltshire U15 and Goatacre CC leg spinner) and the Hampshire star’s grandparents.

"It was very weird when Liam played at Lord’s 18 years to the weekend since our final but this will be even more special," continued Dawson snr, whose family will be in an executive box with Jimmy Adams’s friends and family.

"Even if they don’t win it’s a cracking day out," he said. "We went to the semi-final at Old Trafford which I really enjoyed as I was born in Manchester and played a few games of youth cricket there. Going back to see Hampshire win and Liam bowl well at a crucial stage in the game made it a sweet day."

Like his dad, Liam is a big Bury FC fan, but cricket is his first love.

"He had a cricket bat as soon as he could walk and spent most of his childhood in our dressing room," said Dawson snr, who moved to Calne after meeting Bev.

He continued: "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!

"I still get people stopping me in the street telling me how they told their missus he’d be on the telly one day after seeing him aged four.

"He first played third-team cricket aged seven and loved it, but I only ever played one league game with him and ran him out!

"We were playing for Goatacre seconds and Liam was dealing well with the quicks, mostly because all the balls were flying over his head! He was only 12 and I forgot it was him at the other end when I turned back for a second. I wasn’t Mr Popular that night!"

After a brief spell with Chippenham CC, where James Vince came through the ranks, Liam joined Hampshire a decade ago following a brief trial with academy director Tony Middleton, one of the heroes of the 1991 Natwest Trophy final win against Surrey.

"Wiltshire couldn’t offer him any age group cricket so he took up an invitation to have a net session at Northands Road and it went from there," explained Andy. "Tony saw him play in the nets for an hour and set the wheels in motion.

"I left him under his wing and Tony’s been absolutely fantastic for him. He’s been a massive influence on Liam and there’s a lot of respect both ways.

"They get on really well, they’re similar types of people with their own ideas on things. We’ve had a good relationship with Tony all the way through.

"The whole club have been brilliant, they told me from day one they would look after him and I can’t praise Chalky (manager Giles White) enough. Rod [Bransgrove] is a big fan of his as well, he loves Liam."

Liam made his first-class debut in what turned out to be Shane Warne’s farewell Hampshire appearance, against Yorkshire at Headingley in September 2007, a few weeks after the county’s last Lord’s final.

A year later he completed an outstanding first full season by following two Natwest Pro40 man-of-the match performances (including one against Sussex) with an LV County Championship hundred against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge to become the county’s youngest ever centurion.

"He’s got a long way to go and he knows that but he’s going in the right direction," continued Dawson snr. "He’s quite a laid-back type of lad but when it comes to cricket he’s got an inner strength. He’s grown up in an adult environment so he’s a tough cookie. The bigger the situation, the more he enjoys it."

Liam captained England Under-19s in South Africa during the winter but chose not to play for them alongside Hampshire teammates Vince, Hamza Riazuddin, Danny Briggs and Chris Wood against Bangladesh Under-19s this month.

That was so he could focus on developing his first-class career with Hampshire.

"He’s no big-time Charlie," added Dawson snr. "He’s popular in town and still has the same mates but if you didn’t know him you wouldn’t have a clue who he is. He doesn’t even tell his mates what he’s done.

"Apparently, he was even scoring a Goatacre colts game recently! That’s the type of lad he is."