Gloucestershire were left to rue an over-cautious declaration when their Rothesay County Championship with Kent ended at Canterbury in a draw.

Tom Price almost single-handedly injected life into what was becoming a tedious final day by reducing Kent to 49 for four with 22 overs remaining, but despite some middle order tremors the visitors dug in to reach 124 for six. England’s Zak Crawley anchored the defence with an unbeaten 54 from 112 balls and Grant Stewart finished on 16 not out, keeping his head during a tense finale that went to the final over.

The visitors batted deeply, arguably too deeply, into the afternoon session before setting a notional target of 413 to win from 41 overs, after declaring on 335 for five, Miles Hammond making 89, Graeme van Buuren 58 and Ollie Price 56. Tom Price finished with figures of four for 33.

Few expected this game to go the distance after 36 overs were lost on day three and the word from the Gloucestershire camp on Sunday night was that they were reluctant to set a low target because of the way Kent chased down 316 last week to beat Middlesex.

They resumed on 112 for two, a lead of 191 and Ollie Price and Hammond at least began like a duo who knew they’d have to score quickly if there was any chance of forcing a result.

Hammond was the more expansive of the two, passing 50 from 79 deliveries with a cover drive off Jas Singh while Price was more pedestrian, taking 116 balls to reach the same landmark with a single off Jack Leaning.

The pace slowed however, until after and hour and fifty minutes of mounting tedium, a wicket finally fell when Leaning had Ollie Price caught behind by the sub wicket-keeper Chris Benjamin.

It was 233 for three at lunch, with the lead 312 and 66 overs remaining. Things threatened to get at least semi-interesting when Cam Green was lbw to Joey Evison in the first over after the resumption and Leaning then had Hammond caught by Tawanda Muyeye at first slip in the next over, but no further wickets fell until Gloucestershire declared at just after 3pm, by which time van Buuren had helped himself to a half-century against the part time spinners and a chase was no longer viable.

A collapse was however, and visiting hopes flared when Tom Price had first innings centurion Ben Compton caught behind off for one and Daniel Bell-Drummond lbw for two.

Kent were on a fragile eight for two at tea and with Crawley in what might be described as sub-optimal form Gloucestershire scented an opportunity, but they were frustrated for the next 10 overs and the game was drifting until Price took another couple of wickets, getting Muyeye lbw and Leaning caught by Cameron Bancroft at second slip.

That was enough to convince Gloucestershire to keep going after 5pm, the earliest time the teams could have shaken hands on the draw.

Just as Kent started to feel safe again Josh Shaw sent Joey Evison’s off-stump flying for a 36-ball 15 and Harry Finch, batting with a broken finger, was caught by Hammond at first slip off Ollie Price. At that point there were still 7.3 overs remaining but Grant Stewart survived, the only major scare coming from an inside edge off Shaw that went perilously close to the stumps.

Crawley endured a couple of alarms in Ollie Price’s penultimate over, leaving Shaw to try and take four wickets with the last six balls.

Stewart blocked the first and drive the next two for fours to ensure Kent survived.

Gloucestershire’s Mark Alleyne said: “From Gloucestershire’s point of view it was a really strong four-day performance I thought. Having had to make use of the pitch first, batting-wise when it was at its trickiest on the first was, I thought, a fantastic effort, from where we were with three down quite early and then to dominate and get to 470 we were in a strong position.

“We probably missed a couple of opportunities in their first innings when they batted and a bigger, healthier lead would have preferable of course, but then to back it up in the second innings, we batted really and took six wickets in their second innings, so it was a great effort over four days.

“We went in overnight, thinking what do we need to do try and win the game today. We were going to take a lot of reflection from how the pitch played first thing in the morning.

“It looked pretty batter-friendly and that coupled with the experience of the game before where Kent batted well probably made us slightly more conservative than we would normally be but a lot of things conspired, like losing our strike bowler (de Lange) so having played such good cricket we didn’t really want to give Kent any chance of getting in the game.

“At one stage he (de Lange) was going to bowl in the second innings but we decided not to take the risk. He’s going to be scanned tomorrow and we’ll have a more exact update on it but he seems quite happy that it’s nothing too serious.”

Kent’s Daniel Bell-Drummond said: “It was a really good game of cricket and obviously some things changed at the back end but there were some really good performances throughout and Gloucester pushed us hard.

“It was a good game for the neutrals and obviously it got a bit tricky at the end but there were a lot of good performance in there and some positives to take forwards for sure.

“Nathan has been brilliant this season, he’s shown his class and how good he can be. He’s come in with a lot of confidence and had a good winter and he’s really bowling some good spells, against some top quality players as well. Against Cam Green that was a good battle and it’s great to see how well he’s doing. Hopefully he’ll go from strength to strength.

“Ben has been excellent as well, just continuing a rich vein of form. He started the season extremely well and he’s a very good run scorer, clearly. In terms of his knock in this game he just how well he can score all around the ground, pressuring the bowlers and brilliant in defence as well, as he always is. He’ll take a lot from that and no doubt he’ll back it up, it’s been a great start from him.

“It’s a pretty calm dressing room so when things like this happen we make sure not to go overboard, but yeah, Gloucester did very well, they bowled well in that period and so they put us under pressure. They were ahead for most of the game and probably could have declared earlier, but happily for us they didn’t.

“I think Zak Crawley showed his class there, he really played well. The wicket was going up and down a bit on day four and he had so much time and showed his international class. It’s very good for him and it’s been a very good start from a team point of view with two wins and a draw.“We were always going to get put under pressure in one of these games and that was today but the boys held strong and showed their fight.”