One of the highlights of the domestic calendar during 2017 will be the first-ever day-night County Championship fixture in Wales as Glamorgan meet Derbyshire in a four-day contest at The SSE SWALEC starting on Monday, June 26th.
Given Glamorgan’s history in recent years, it is fitting that the innovation for day-night matches in the Specsavers County Championship should see a game allocated to Cardiff. On 27th April 1997 the one-day match between Glamorgan and Warwickshire was the first-ever in the U.K. to be decided by the Duckworth-Lewis Method, whilst in July 2009, the Test Match at Cardiff between England and Australia was the first in the U.K., and the first in an Ashes series on British soil to see floodlights augment natural light.
Glamorgan’s earliest encounter with floodlight cricket came in 1981 in the Lambert and Butler Cup, played at the Ashton Gate football ground in Bristol, when they lost to Hampshire in a rain-affected contest at the home of Bristol City FC. The St. Helen’s rugby ground in Swansea then staged a series of matches with a Rest of the World XI between August 1988 and July 1993. Each was on an astroturf wicket laid out adjacent to the half-way line and under the floodlights used by the All Whites, rather than on the cricket ground itself. The first of these light-hearted contests, on August 3rd, 1988 was part of the Club’s Centenary Year celebrations, and like the rest of the games, was won by the all-star invitation side.
The first proper floodlit match involving Glamorgan took place at Edgbaston on August 2nd, 1998 with the Welsh county meeting and beating Warwickshire by 38 runs in a National League encounter. June 13th, 2000 saw the inaugural floodlit contest at Sophia Gardens with Glamorgan, once again, prospering under the floodlights as they defeated Essex by 13 runs.
The floodlights for this, and the other matches in the early 2000s at Sophia Gardens took place under portable equipment, and the ground redevelopment from the mid 2000s has seen the installation of five permanent pylons. Until 2017, they have only been used by Glamorgan for their white-ball cricket, but between June 26th and June 29th, 2017 they will be used in one of their red ball games for the first time.
It will not though be the first time that the Welsh county have been involved in a floodlit Championship match as in September 2011 they took part in a day-night four-day contest with pink balls at Canterbury. During the game, Stewart Walters posted a fine century against the Kent attack to guide the Welsh county to an emphatic eight-wicket and Glamorgan supporters will be looking forward to a similar result as The SSE SWALEC takes part in the ECB’s innovative round of floodlit Championship matches.