THE most remarkable of games deserved the most astonishing of finishes – and, my Lord, how it got one!

Derbyshire, bowled out for 44 on the first morning, beat Gloucestershire by 54 runs yesterday at Bristol to complete a comeback that Lazarus would have been proud of.

The county has never recovered from scoring as low a total in their first innings to win a Championship match but after Chesney Hughes produced another wonderful addition to his rapidly expanding list of achievements with an unbeaten 96 of great character, Derbyshire bowled a jittery Gloucestershire out for 70 in their second innings.

This was the shortest completed four-day match Derbyshire have ever been involved in – it was all over in 148.5 overs before tea on the second day – but what it lacked in length, it made up for in incident.

Derbyshire, behind by 112 at the end of the first innings, were effectively 15-4 overnight but making a fight of it on a pitch that was still helping the bowlers and they managed to scrap their way to an overall lead of 124 before the last wicket fell at 236.

Hughes was left four runs short of what would have been his third Championship century and, if he had made it to three figures as he deserved to, this would have been his finest.

Unquestionably, he rode his luck at times with plenty of plays-and-misses and edges that fell just short of close fielders but to rise above all that, stay calm and make the most significant score of a match that did not otherwise yield a 50 was a marvellous effort from a very talented teenager.

The 19-year-old faced 156 balls and hit 13 fours and a six but sometimes statistics do not even tell half of the story.

However, for all that, Gloucestershire were surely set to knock off the 125 they needed for victory. It was not as if time was an issue.

But from the moment William Porterfield completed a pair to the fifth ball of the innings, a deepening sense of panic filled the home ranks.

Graham Wagg and Tim Groenewald ripped into them. Groenewald took the next three wickets after Wagg's opener, then Wagg took two more.

With 15 overs gone, Gloucestershire were 31-6 and the unthinkable was being dragged into the realms of the achievable.

It has to be said that the Gloucestershire batting was atrociously bad but if a bowling side exerts the sort of concerted pressure Derbyshire did, mistakes will be made. Though the players' spirit has been called into question at times this season, it was strong here.

Groenewald captured his fourth wicket to make it 46-7 and was to finish with 4-22 as the two opening bowlers sent down 10 overs each. Wagg's return was 3-31.

It was no situation for a young man on his first-team debut and Jack Taylor gave a return catch to Steffan Jones to make it 58-8 and give the Welshman his fifth wicket in nine balls for the match.

Through all this bedlam, Hamish Marshall stood out as the only batsman who seemed to know which way round to hold the bat but even his heart was broken by then and when he got a faint edge through to the wicketkeeper hooking at a Jon Clare ball, his stubborn stay ended for 44 out of a score of 58-9.

All that was left to do was for Clare to rip out Anthony Ireland's off stump and a victory that should be celebrated long and hard was complete.