Captain Luke Wright blamed his side’s poor fielding and a crazy dropped catch as Sussex's winning run in the Royal London One-Day Cup came to an end against Essex at Chelmsford.

Ajmal Shahzad dropped Ryan ten Doeschate when he was on 38 and the Essex skipper went on to make 102 as the hosts recovered from 3-19 - with Jerome Taylor taking a hat-trick - to set a total of 295-7.

Sussex struggled to keep up with the run-rate despite half centuries from Chris Nash and Stiaan van Zyl. Jofra Archer blazed 45 from 22 balls to give them hope of snatching a fourth successive win but the Sharks were bowled out for 285 with 11 balls remaining.

Wright said: “I still think we should have won it. I’m more disappointed with the one thing we’ve gone away from is fielding like that. For the last two or three games we’ve been awesome in the field and that was one of the things I wanted us to keep going with.

“It just felt sloppy from the start. The hat-trick gets you right in the game and probably kept them around a par score. But the fielding cost us today.

“It came to that moment when it’s never a bowler’s catch. It goes up and it’s straight to a keeper with big gloves on and then he takes the catch. I think everyone in the ground was shouting, ‘Keepers!’ But, look, the bowler (Shahzad) wanted it and unfortunately he dropped it and you know at that point it’s a big moment and Tendo made use of it.

“That was a big moment because then we would probably have been chasing 250. I still think we should have chased that total down, but we just lost wickets at key stages.

“We just needed one person to go and get that one score and all the other players around him having cameos. But it took a great innings by Jofra to get us a lot closer than we probably were. He is a huge talent and there are little things he can learn. He is a raw talent to hit the ball like that. If he keeps learning he will be a helluva cricketer.”