Briggs: "It's great to be given such a wonderful opportunity"

Experienced left arm spinner Briggs will make his Bears debut, against Derbyshire in the LV=Insurance County Championship next week, looking to add to the 579 wickets he has already taken across the formats in senior cricket.

To the former Hampshire and Sussex player will fall the sizeable challenge of replacing Jeetan Patel as the Bears' primary spinner. It is a challenge to which the 29-year-is determined to rise.

"A really exciting opportunity has opened up for me and I'm going to try to take it with both hands. It's great to be given such a wonderful opportunity and to know that the chance is there for me to play a lot of cricket.

"In the last four or five years, my red-ball appearances have not been as consistent as I would have liked, so I am eager to play as many games as possible and contribute to us winning as many games as possible."

After a campaign in the Big Bash in Australia with Adelaide Strikers, Briggs has been back at Edgbaston for the last month settling in with his new team-mates.

"We had loads of practice indoors which was great to hone your skills and work on different little bits and bobs before the summer," he said. "But then getting outside was really good. We were lucky that we had a lot of dry days and got a decent amount of outdoor training in before we went into the games.

"Playing championship cricket again will be a little bit different after the Big Bash, but since I've been back in England, I've been bowling with the red ball a lot more than the white ball. It's been really good to get back to basics and into four-day cricket mode.

"It's good that the championship cricket comes in a decent block at the start of the year. As a spinner, sometimes you don't expect to get too much work early season but you have got to be ready and able to do your job every game, whatever that job might be. If that job is bowling my overs to keep things tight so it opens things up for the seamers at the other end, then fine.

"Hopefully, the seamers are flying in and taking wickets, in which case there will be a holding role to be done as well which hopefully I can fulfil early season and then gradually that role will change as the season goes on."