Player Profile

From Stockport to Scotland!

Off-spinner Olivia Bell - Liv if you want - has had quite the introduction to senior cricket, impressing for Lancashire Thunder in 2023 and then representing her country at the T20 World Cup in the UAE towards the end of 2024.

Bell, now 21, had a stunning breakthrough campaign for Thunder the summer before, claiming 25 wickets in only eight matches in both the Charlotte Edwards Cup and the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy.

That haul included a trio of four-wicket hauls; two in the RHFT 50-over competition and one in the CE Cup T20 campaign as Thunder reached Finals Day.

Bell’s form for Thunder earned her the club’s young player-of-the-year award, and she will not forget her maiden appearance at a World Cup in 2024 in a hurry. She claimed four wickets in as many matches in Sharjah and Dubai.

Bell didn’t have the impact in a Red Rose shirt last summer that she will have hoped, but she will attack 2025 with confidence and - by the end of the year - could also have a 50-over World Cup appearance to her name. That competition takes place in India.

In all international cricket, she has taken 15 wickets from as many appearances.

Born in Stockport, Bell came through the Cheshire age-groups, playing Under 13s to Under 18s cricket for them before joining Thunder’s Academy in 2022.

When you look at her career stats, it’s interesting to note that her best recorded return for any team is 5-34 from eight overs in a 40-over County Cup game for Cheshire Under 18s against their Lancashire counterparts at Leigh in June 2021.

Current team-mates Seren Smale and Liberty Heap were in Red Rose colours that day. You wonder how big an impact that performance had on her arrival at Emirates Old Trafford.

Bell is a bowler who has admitted that keeping it simple was key to her early success in senior cricket for the Red Rose, saying: “I have been speaking to Sophie (Ecclestone) and Ellie (Threlkeld) about things, and there is something to be said for bowling straight in a T20.

“If you are hitting the stumps, there is every mode of dismissal available. That’s all I’ve tried to do.”