Player Profile
Ailsa Lister will, in 2026, represent Scotland on her home ground at Emirates Old Trafford.
Scotland have qualified for June’s T20 World Cup, and they will face Ireland in Manchester.
Wicketkeeper-batter Lister has the ability to light the place up this summer. She, is after all, a player with power to burn. But she’s far from a one-trick pony, as she proved in a Lancashire shirt in 2025.
The Elgin-born soon to be 22-year-old scooped the county’s young player-of-year award last summer thanks to performances across the board.
She scored 283 runs in T20 cricket, including a best of 79 in a Vitality Blast defeat against The Blaze at Leicester in June. Televised by Sky, she recovered Thunder from 65-4 to 150-9 with poise as well as power.
Lister had played a full part as the Red Rose won the County T20 Cup title a month earlier.
She would also go on to help them win the Metro Bank One-Day Cup in late September, hitting the winning runs in the final against Hampshire at Southampton.
Lister totalled 209 runs in that competition from the middle order, including a brilliant best of 96.
Again, the right-hander showed the poise when needed the most.
In the semi-final against The Blaze at Trent Bridge, Lancs were on the ropes at 52-4 batting first. But she united with captain Ellie Threlkeld to share 166 and transform the innings to an unassailable 241-6. She hit 11 fours in 91 balls.
Lister went on to post 17 not out in the final as the visitors successfully chased 289.
She was subsequently nominated by the PCA for their young player-of-the-year award.
What an end to the season!
And the new year didn’t start too badly either.
At the beginning of 2026, Lister helped Scotland come through a T20 World Cup qualifying campaign in Nepal, sealing their place at the top table for this coming summer.
We’ve already talked about Lister’s composure. Well, we’re going to have to mention it again.
Scotland went into their final game needing to beat Tara Norris’s USA to advance, and the game was on the line with the Scots at 117-5 in the 12th over batting first. Anyway, Lister hit 43 off 32 balls to help fashion a 178-8 total which couldn’t be matched.
Lister made her debut for Lancashire in 2024, playing five times in the regional Charlotte Edwards Cup T20 competition. She posted a dynamic best of 44 off 30 balls in a defeat against The Blaze at Loughborough in May.
She has played 63 times for Scotland across the formats, the vast majority of which have come in T20s. She is, at time of writing, a whisker away from 1,000 international runs.
With the likes of Ellie Threlkeld and Sarah Bryce in front of her wicketkeeping wise at county and international level respectively, Lister has often played as a specialist batter.
In April 2023, she crashed a fabulous 117 not out off 75 balls opening the batting for Scotland in a non-professional T20 County Cup victory over Lancashire at Glasgow.
You wonder how much of an impact that innings played in her signing for the county?
Lister has played age-group cricket for Scotland since 2017 - at Under 17s, Under 19s and Under 21s level, also featuring for her country’s A team.
She has also played winter club cricket in Australia in the past. In September 2022, she played for the Perth club, Midland-Guildford.
A few months later, she was Scotland’s vice captain at the inaugural Under 19s T20 World Cup in South Africa.
Lister would surely have played more for the Red Rose in 2024, her first as a contracted professional at Emirates Old Trafford, but for injury.
Thankfully, she more than made up for that in 2025. And there’s plenty more to come from this talented youngster in 2026 and beyond.