THORNBURY’S Chris Dent was Gloucestershire’s hero in their last Specsavers County Championship match of the season against Sussex in Bristol.

Dent held together a terrible first innings for the county as they finished on 229 all out, with the Thornbury ace hitting ninety of those runs until he was caught and bowled by Jofra Archer after just over five hours at the crease.

The 25-year-old left hander showed terrific resilience throughout the first day on a wicket that provided the visiting bowlers with plenty of lateral movement.

He saw seven partners depart before Gloucestershire had reached one hundred and then, with David Payne at his side, led the host county into an unlikely, but gratefully accepted position of relative strength at the close of that opening day.

Payne was also a caught and bowled victim, this time to Chris Jordan, after 114 balls and nine boundaries produced 56 runs.

But, with Winterbourne youngster James Bracey hitting two runs on his debut and Kiwi legend Hamish Marshall scoring 14 in his last match before returning home, plus twenty from Craig Miles, the rest of the team failed to reach double figures.

Gloucestershire’s final wicket fell in yesterday’s morning session and Sussex started off confidently in their reply.

Josh Shaw was, though, on target for Gloucestershire, He took opener Tom Haines, caught by wicketkeeper Phil Mustard, for a single with four on the board and broke a highly-significant partnership between opener Chris Nash and number three Luke Wells as it looked like they were set for long knocks.

Shaw had Nash caught again by Mustard with the score on 118, and then followed that up by smashing the stumps of number four Fynn Hudson-Prentice all over the place with the batsman on nine.

It left Sussex on 128-3 at tea and still 101 runs short of the Gloucestershire total.