Glamorgan are to host the first day-night Championship match to be held in Wales next season.
The Welsh county will play Derbyshire in a four-day contest at The Swalec Satdium starting on Monday, June 26th.
The move is part of the game’s attempt to prepare for an expansion in pink ball, day-night cricket with England due to play day-night Test matches in 2017.
The game in Cardiff will be one of a full round of nine floodlit matches in the Specsavers County Championship all starting on the same day, to be played with pink Dukes balls and hosted by Essex, Hampshire, Warwickshire and Yorkshire, Durham, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Sussex and Glamorgan.
Although a full round of fixtures is unprecedented the day/night innovation to Championship cricket is not the first-ever Championship game to be staged under floodlights as in September 2011 Glamorgan were victorious in a pink-ball trial at Canterbury against Kent.
Before then Glamorgan face a trip to Northamptonshire for their first Specsavers County Championship encounter next season from Friday 7 April, the first of seven rounds that begin on a Friday, meaning a significant increase in the amount of weekend Championship cricket in 2017.
However the first-class season gets underway on March 28th with a three-day contest against Cardiff MCCU at The SSE SWALEC to finalise preparations. This will be the earliest ever start to a domestic season with the previous earliest against Oxford MCCU in 2012, which began on March 31st.
Glamorgan begin the NatWest T20 Blast campaign with four of their first six games in Cardiff, beginning with Hampshire at home on Friday, July 7. The T20 Blast competition will dominate the next seven weeks of the season – a major shift in emphasis for the competition, meaning teams will play their 14 qualifying matches in a concentrated period in high summer and primarily in the school holidays rather than spread over three months as previously.
Friday nights are still popular in the schedule with four of the seven T20 games providing the perfect start to summer weekends, and fixtures against Somerset and Essex Eagles falling on a Saturday and Sunday respectively.
The Royal London One-Day Cup starts and finishes much earlier in the campaign to provide a feast of fifty over cricket early in the season, prior to the return of the ICC Champions Trophy to Wales in June.
Glamorgan’s four Royal London One-Day Cup games are against Surrey, Somerset and Essex Eagles in Cardiff and the match against Kent Spitfires at St. Helen’s completes the group stage in mid-May.
Durham will also be visitors at Swansea for the four-day game on Friday, May 26th and continuing over the Whitsun Bank Holiday, and the annual Championship trip to Colwyn Bay starts on Bank Holiday Monday, August 28th with Sussex visiting the Rhos-on-Sea ground.
The last time Sussex traveled to north Wales was in 2000 when the Welsh county posted a record-breaking total of 718-3dec as Steve James became the first – and so far – only Glamorgan batsman to score a triple-hundred as he posted an unbeaten 309*. The ground was in the history books again last year when 19-year-old Aneurin Donald matched Ravi Shastri’s success with a world record equaling fastest double-century in first-class cricket.
Other highlights for supporters include a trip to Cheltenham for a four-day contest with Gloucestershire at the historic College ground, the return of Durham to Division Two with Glamorgan set to meet the north-east county at Emirates Riverside in Chester-le-Street in June, Nottinghamshire playing in Cardiff for the first four-day game between the two counties since 2007 and a trip to the picturesque ground at Arundel for the first–ever time in the Welsh club’s history for a T20 clash under the shadow of the Castle against Sussex Sharks.