Winter Watch: Briggs Upbeat Despite 'Harsh' Conditions

Difficult weekend for royals overseas

It was a tough weekend for some of our Hampshire players playing overseas. Danny Briggs, Neil McKenzie, Dimi Mascarenhas and Liam Dawson all played while James Vince missed out on the England Lions fourth one-day game against Bangladesh A.
 
It was McKenzie that enjoyed the most success as, just days after pledging his 2012 commitment to Hampshire, his South African side, the Highveld Lions, beat the Warriors by 94 runs. The batsman impressed in the game scoring a half-century in the first innings and, despite only reaching five in his second innings, would have been happy enough to have come out on the winning side.

Elsewhere, Briggs took an eighth wicket of the England Lions tour of Bangladesh but it wasn’t enough to save his team from a seven-wicket defeat. The young spinner’s dismissal of Jahurul Islam was a positive but Briggs admitted it’s been a tough series for England’s rising stars. 
 
“The conditions are harsh and a lot different from home but that’s the challenge we face” he told ECB.co.uk before the match. “The more we learn, the better we will get.”

He continued, ““It has been nice to bowl on these wickets and trying to adapt and learn. The Lions tours and EPP tours so far have been really good for me. I’ve got a lot out of them, learning-wise and performance-wise.

“It’s always nice to be in the wickets, but on this sort of tour it’s all about the team and the team performing well, so that’s the main aim.”

Briggs added, “The bowlers are thinking a lot about how we are going to bowl to the Bangladeshi batsmen, and our batsmen are working really hard as a unit. I don’t think we can do any more to be honest. We are all working our socks off and we are not far away from a big performance.”
 
Meanwhile, Dimi Mascarenhas’s chance of qualifying for the next round of the HRV Cup in New Zealand ended last night as his Otago side lost by 8 wickets to Auckland. The all-rounder finished with bowling figures of 0-31 off his three overs and scored eight in his side’s modest total of 150.

On Saturday morning, Liam Dawson bowled three overs for the price of seven runs and was dismissed for 0 playing in Dandenong’s clash against Camberwell Magpies in Australia.

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Click here to read the full Danny Briggs interview on ECB.co.uk.

Words: Ryan Day
Images: NJM Photography

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