Yusuf Pathan at the Eden on Friday

Calcutta: If one shot has undone all the good work, it’s got to be the inside-out scoop shot by Bengal captain Laxmi Ratan Shukla off Swapnil Singh on the third day of the Ranji Trophy Super League match against Baroda.

“You’ve got to take your chances. I was hitting the ball well… Sadly, though my intention was right, the execution was wrong.

“Had I cleared the mid-off fielder, it would have been dubbed as a great shot,” Shukla said at the post-match media conference on Friday.

Bengal’s Ranji Trophy match against Baroda will be a classic example of how the hosts frittered away the advantage at crucial junctures to gift away three points.

The hosts reduced Baroda to 146 for six, but couldn’t get Irfan and Pinal Shah out during the final session on the first day.

The second day saw an equally unimpressive performance from the bowlers as they let the tail wag. Swapnil used the long handle to good effect against the Bengal pacers who repeatedly were found wanting in line and length.

To add insult to injury, Baroda scored 400 runs on the final day with Satyajit Parab scoring 154 and Yusuf Pathan 63. It showed the Bengal bowling in poor light.

If it was about horrible bowling, the list of irresponsible shots doesn’t end with Shukla alone.

Arindam Ghosh got one chance to prove himself. Instead of grabbing it with both hands, he let doubts be cast over his temperament.

He tried to hoist left-arm spinner Swapnil when all he was required to do was to play out the session before tea (one over was left).

With Manoj Tiwary coming back in the next game against Karnataka, it will be surprising if he gets another look-in in the near future.

Dibyendu Chakraborty is another player whose 100-minute ordeal increased the pressure on the team.

When only 35-odd runs were required for the first innings lead, Dibyendu played as if he was trying to save the team from an innings defeat.

Shukla may try to defend his shot on the chance factor, but there is no denying the fact that Bengal bungled it up against Baroda.

If Shukla and his boys fail to make it to the knock-out stage of the competition, the faulty planning and below-par effort against Baroda will definitely be one of the key reasons.

A shoddy performance has undone all the good work that Bengal did by winning outright against Maharashtra in Pune last week.

“There are certainly no excuses for not being able to get 308 for the crucial first-innings lead after being 257 for five. Let’s accept that our batting has not been up to the mark,” Shukla said.

“I have told my teammates that we need to buck up. This was the pitch where we should have easily scored 375-400,” he added, dejection writ large on his face.

Although Bengal players may blame it on the late-order collapse, their former coach knew it was just a matter of one wicket.

“The moment we had Sourav Ganguly’s wicket, we knew that we had a match on our hands.

“They may have been 50 runs away from surpassing our total but we stuck to our plan and it worked.

“Obviously knowing some of their players and their problem areas worked in our favour,” Baroda coach Paras Mhambrey, who guided Bengal to successive Ranji Trophy finals (2005-06, 2006-07) said.