Law joined Lancashire in 2002 after six years with Essex

The 39-year-old succeeds Mark Chilton, who stepped down last month after three seasons in charge.

Australia-born Law has enjoyed plenty of captaincy success during his career, having led Queensland to seven trophies between 1995 and 2002.

Now a UK citizen, he recently signed a new one-year contract with the club and his top priority next season will be to try and win the County Championship.

They had to settle for third place this summer, but were just 25 runs short of the 489 they needed to beat Surrey in the final game, a victory which would have enabled them to leapfrog champions Sussex and runners-up Durham.

"I think there's been years when we've been the best cricket team in the competition and not managed to get over the line.

606: DEBATE This news has given me hope that there is after all some actual intelligence within the management at Old Trafford 4DayBeliever

"It is the holy grail but if you win a championship you deserve to win it by being consistently good over six months," said Law, who has scored more than 10,000 runs for the club in all competitions.

"We have been consistently good over six months for the last few years and we've finished third last time and second twice. We're getting there.

"We just need an ounce of luck and fingers crossed we'll bring something to table next year in that regard."

Law insisted he was hungry to play a full part in all competitions in 2008, despite discussing the possibility of sitting out the Twenty20 Cup or Pro40 league with club officials before accepting the captaincy.

"I went away and I thought 'I can't play cricket like this, not giving 100% in every game' so I came back and said 'I want to play in every game possible'.

"I'm putting my name on the team-sheet for every game I can. That's my priority. For me, not getting the most out of myself would be letting the team down," he explained.

Lancashire's first Championship fixture of 2008 will be against Surrey at The Oval, starting on 16 April, and Law will be hoping for a positive start after being chosen as skipper ahead of other candidates such as Dominic Cork, Glen Chapple and Luke Sutton.

"The captain is the one who makes the decisions but there should be 11 captains out there making choices and trying to get the game done and dusted," he added.

The club has, meanwhile, announced that no cricket will be played at Old Trafford next summer after a Pro40 game against Middlesex on 17 August.

More than 1,600 overs of play has been lost in the past two seasons because of rain and the decision has been taken to enable a new drainage system to be installed.

"We are planning to rebuild the entire outfield and replace the existing drainage with a system similar to that of Lord's," head groundsman Peter Marron told the club's website.

"The system we will be adopting is what many Premiership football clubs have and although cricket will never be played during wet weather, this new drainage system guarantees play will get under way much more quickly following rain, hopefully within an hour."

Lancashire's last three home games next summer will be played at Liverpool and Blackpool.