Player Profile
Laura Jackson is a seam bowling all-rounder - a 26-year-old who could well reach 100 senior career appearances in 2024.
Jackson has played county cricket for Cheshire, Cumbria and Lancashire added to appearances for Thunder and Manchester Originals in the Hundred.
She currently sits on 88 appearances; 52 in T20s and 36 in List A cricket.
Despite that, she remains a cricketer who is emerging and still learning her game. But she has a high ceiling.
A pace bowler who swings the ball significantly, particularly in to the right-hander, she bats in the lower middle order.
Ormskirk-born Jackson will hope that 2024 yields more opportunity for Thunder than the previous summer did, her only playing four times in the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy. But when she did play, she contributed five wickets, including a pair of two-wicket hauls.
In April and May 2022, she played a short series of T20 matches for an England Development XI against an England A side.
Jackson has played women’s and men’s cricket at home and abroad, playing winter grade cricket in Melbourne pre the days of regional cricket.
She played age-group cricket for Lancashire from Under 15s before making her senior debut for the county in 2016, at the age of 18.
She played county age-group badminton growing up, a sport her parents were particularly keen on, while she has also tried her hand at gymnastics and is a season ticket holder at Liverpool Football Club.
Jackson played club cricket for the Wigan side Norley Hall before signing to play for Liverpool Competition side Rainford ahead of the 2023 summer, the club where her close mate Ellie Threlkeld plays.
Whilst playing 50-over cricket for Cumbria against Scotland A in May 2019, she claimed a stunning haul of 7-9 from 10 overs as the visitors were bowled out for just 72. What made that haul all the more remarkable was that all of her wickets were bowled.
In the 2021 Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, she enjoyed a memorable day against Central Sparks at New Road when she claimed three wickets and hit 30 from number seven as Thunder chased down 204 to win by two wickets.
At the start of 2022, her first as a regional contracted professional with Thunder, in a Charlotte Edwards Cup win over Northern Diamonds at Sale, she also bowled England duo Lauren Winfield-Hill and Nat Sciver with her big in-swingers to make the ideal start to the defence of a 149 target.
Arguably Jackson’s biggest achievement in life was raising money and awareness for the rare disease Sarcoidosis, something her mother Lynn passed away because of in early 2022.
She organised a charity walk up Coniston Old Man in the Lake District and hopes to do more in the coming years.