Player Profile
Alice Clarke is a wicketkeeper-batter from Accrington, following the same path taken to Emirates Old Trafford as men’s greats David and Graham Lloyd.
She has played first and second-team cricket for the Lancashire League club.
Clarke, aged 24, is one of a couple of understudies to first choice Red Rose keeper and captain Ellie Threlkeld - England’s Seren Smale is the other - and she was part of the Metro Bank One-Day Cup title triumph in 2025.
Like Smale, Clarke has the capabilities to play as a specialist top order batter. After all, that is how she made her Thunder debut in regional cricket almost five years ago, and that is how she contributed to the aforementioned silverware success.
In September, she came in to play three matches, including the semi-final and final, opening the batting alongside Gaby Lewis and posting a top score of 17.
That came on the back of a couple of notable friendly scorers - 59 and 98 - against Durham earlier in the summer.
Ahead of 2025, she signed her maiden professional contract with her home county.
Like Threlkeld, Clarke has had captaincy experience, skippering Cumbria in county cricket. She made her senior debut for Lancashire in 2018, also playing for the Northern Representative XI.
Clarke made her regional debut for Thunder in the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy in 2020, posting a top-score of 41 in six appearances. That came in late 2024 against Western Storm at Taunton - a game the visitors won.
A few months earlier, in a 50-over friendly win against the Netherlands at Emirates Old Trafford, she opened the batting and hit a brilliant 100 not out off 125 balls.
Clarke has played Under 15s and Under 17s cricket for Lancashire and has impressed for Thunder’s Academy.
In mid-summer 2022, Clarke took part in a women in sport and business panel discussion before Thunder played a floodlit Charlotte Edwards Cup match against Vipers at Emirates Old Trafford. It was a panel of female local leaders and sport stars.
Lancashire chief executive Daniel Gidney said shortly afterwards: “Alice speaks so well and confidently for one so young, and I think she’s got a bright future. The day after the panel, she was netting at 9am because she hadn’t made the squad.
"For her to see it and think, 'I want a bit of that playing under lights at Emirates Old Trafford', to me that kind of proves it (hosting the match under lights) was success.”
Fingers crossed, Gidney is right and Clarke is shining bright for Thunder in years to come.
The arrival of former England men’s wicketkeeper Chris Read as Thunder’s new coach ahead of 2024 was no doubt good news for Clarke as he looks to kick her game forwards in the coming years.