Sussex will play a Championship match under floodlights at Hove next summer.

Luke Wright’s men are set to take on Gloucestershire in a day-night match starting on Monday June 29 as part of an ECB experiment as it tries to find ways to increase the appeal of the four-day game.

All Championship matches in that round of fixtures will be floodlit with pink balls being used and a likely to start time of 2pm, meaning games will not finish until after 9pm.

It will only be the second time Championship games have been played in the evening following a trial between Kent and Glamorgan at Canterbury in 2011.

There were plans to stage a day-night game at the end of last season -– with Sussex’s final match against Gloucestershire at Bristol one possibility – but they never came to fruition.

Pink balls were first used in floodlit first class cricket in Australia’s Sheffield Shield competition in 1994 and the ICC sanctioned day-night Test matches in 2012. The clash between New Zealand and Australia in Adelaide last November was the first to be played under lights and attracted a crowd of 123,000.

England will play their first day-night Test against the West Indies at Edgbaston in August.

Sussex have historically led the way when it comes to floodlights.

They staged only the second ever floodlight county match against Surrey in the AXA Sunday League in 1997 and then becoming the first county to install permanent floodlights the following year.

Meanwhile, Sussex will kick off their Championship campaign at home to Kent with their final match of the division two season also at Hove against Nottinghamshire.

Leicestershire will be the visitors to Arundel in the Championship in July with the Castle Ground the venue for Sussex’s opening match in the NatWest T20 Blast against Glamorgan.

Eastbourne will stage a Sussex match for the first time since 2000 when the Sharks take on Gloucestershire in the Royal London One Day Cup in May but the Horsham festival is absent from the calendar for the second year in a row.