Virender Sehwag with centurion Rajat Bhatia at Eden Gardens on Wednesday. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Calcutta: The big guns were flown in and they flopped as Delhi’s quest for a bonus point from Wednesday’s national one-day meet tie against Rajasthan met an unsuccessful end at Eden Gardens.

In fact, Delhi escaped defeat and registered a 23-run win thanks to the efforts of the little-known Rajat Bhatia, whose courageous unbeaten 100 took his team to 204 for nine from a wobbly 52 for five.

Delhi had to restrict Rajasthan below 164 to get the bonus. They overcame a poor start even while bowling and eventually succeeded in packing Rajasthan off for 181. Gagan Khoda’s team, with the weakest batting in the competition, ended their campaign with four straight defeats.

The new ball did a bit in the morning and despite some characteristic early fours from captain Virender Sehwag, Delhi were three down for 38 by the ninth over. The India opener’s contribution was a 29-ball 32 with five scorching boundaries. The quick dismissals of Ajay Jadeja and Vinay Kumar made things worse, before Bhatia rose to the occasion.

He shared fifty-plus stands with N.S. Negi (sixth wicket) and Rahul Sanghvi (eighth wicket) to give the Delhi bowlers something to bowl at.

It was Bhatia’s second successive century of the meet, following the one against Tamil Nadu on Monday, and the hallmark of this knock was determination and common-sense. He cut loose in the closing overs and his 116-ball century, completed off the last ball of the innings, included seven fours and two sixes.

Delhi’s hopes of early breakthroughs evaporated soon as openers Khoda and Dishant Yagnik started sending Ashish Nehra and Amit Bhandari to all parts of the ground. The duo didn’t help their cause by trying too hard to extract help from the wicket.

Khoda played some elegant shots and some of the drives bore the signature of a fairly accomplished batsman. The Rajasthan innings fell apart once he became the third man to fall at 112 in the 20th over. Khoda’s 60-ball 68 contained 13 fours.

BRIEF SCORES

Delhi 201/9 in 50 ovs (Rajat Bhatia 100 n.o., Virender Sehwag 32, Sumit Mathur 2/26, Ramesh Rawat 2/41, Rahul Kanwat 2/41). Rajasthan 181 in 40.2 ovs (Gagan Khoda 68, Dishant Yagnik 26, Amit Bhandari 2/41, Sarandeep Singh 2/33, Rahul Sanghvi 2/16). Delhi won by 21 runs.