Kent's Twenty20 Cup qualification hopes were dented in near darkness at Hove on Thursday night.

A generator failure at the North End of Sussex’s ground meant the floodlights at one end never came on all night.

Spitfires openers Joe Denly and Darren Stevens stayed ahead of the run rate until Michael Yardy’s 11th over when they scored only two runs – and the umpires then promptly took the sides off with the light fading fast.

Kent skipper Martin van Jaarsveld felt that the umpires should have shortened the game prior to the start, as they already knew that the lights were not going to come on.

He told the club’s official website: "I think we needed to level the playing field at the start of the game by maybe having a 10-overs a side game from the start.

"The way it (the floodlight failure) was explained to us earlier I think this was always going to happen at the back end of the evening.

"I think the boys did really well keeping us ahead on the Duckworth/Lewis and in fairness to Yardy I’d have probably done exactly the same as he did once we slipped behind the asking rate.

"He bought a seamer on, the umpires then took us off and it was game over for us."

Sussex skipper Yardy turned to Robin Martin-Jenkins to bowl after Kent fell behind the run rate but the two umpires took the sides off after two discussions.

Kent had done well to restrict their hosts to 131-3 from 20 overs.

Dwayne Smith held the Sussex effort together with an unbeaten 69 but he was dropped on one by van Jaarsveld and on 44 by Robbie Joseph. Simon Cook was the pick of the Kent attack with figures of 1-18 from four overs.

In Kent’s reply, Denly scored a run-a-ball 32 but Stevens struggled to 27 not out as they adopted a cautious approach to staying ahead of the required run-rate under the Duckworth/Lewis method.