Puneet Bisht after his century on Thursday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta: When stumps were drawn on the third day, the Delhi cricketers still didn’t have an update on the Baroda versus Maharashtra game. As soon as the news reached that Baroda chasing a paltry target of 101 for victory are already a wicket down, one could sense the Delhi players heaving a collective sigh of relief.

That effectively means that even if Delhi manage a single point, which they will in all likelihood, they will be safely through to the quarter finals with 16 points. Baroda at best can manage only 15 as the bonus point is out of question.

Delhi, who finished the day on 348 for seven by courtesy Puneet Bisht’s (103 batting) unbeaten century, are still 25 runs short of avoiding the follow-on. With only a day left and the pitch at its slowest best , an outright result is out of question.

Puneet, the pint-sized wicket-keeper batsman hit his second first-class century of the season and it came in a pressure situation when the hosts looked like tightening their grip on the match. Bisht came in to bat when the post-lunch session commenced .

At 181 for five, Bengal were in the driver’s seat but Bisht, along with Gaurav Chabra (38), slowly but steadily carried out the rescue act.

Chabra may not have scored big but he and Bisht batted for 26.1 overs and consumed more than two hours. That’s what Delhi needed at that time.

With skipper Laxmi Ratan Shukla unable to bowl due to a rib injury (although he fielded for the better part), Bengal were reduced to four bowlers. Each of the four bowlers — Ranadeb Bose, Ashok Dinda, Sourashis Lahiri and Iresh Saxena — had to bowl long spells. The absence of a good fifth bowler was definitely felt as there was no relief for the quartet.

Left-arm spinner Saxena though managed to extract some turn from the strip but it hardly bothered the visitors.

In the morning, Aditya Jain (56) and Mithun Manhas (88) confidently played out the first hour. Dinda, who recently made his Twenty20 international debut, was guilty of bowling too short in his first spell. The vastly experienced Manhas didn’t have any difficulty playing Dinda. One such short ball was pulled to the square leg boundary to complete his half century.

Jain, on the otherhand, also gave solid support. Delhi’s fifth choice opener (after Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Aakash Chopra, Shikhar Dhawan, although he batted No. 3 in this match) didn’t have much problem tackling Dinda and Bose.

When the spinners came into operation, Saxena first got a few balls to keep low. One such delivery fooled Jain but Wriddhiman Saha missed a stumping chance.

Bengal didn’t have to pay much for Wriddhiman’s benevolence as the batsman was caught at silly point by Rohan Banerjee off Saxena very soon. Manhas, who was using his feet well against spinners, was trapped leg before by Sourashish.

Senior pacer Ranadeb must be given due credit for his perseverance as he was patient enough sticking to the off-stump line. Finally he got his third wicket of the innings when Chabra’s dogged effort came to an end, edging one to Wriddhiman. Ranadeb is now just two short of completing 300 wickets, which will enable him cross Subrata Guha’s 299 first-class wickets.

Late in the day, Dinda got his first wicket of the match when he trapped Pradeep Sangwan (16) leg before. But not before he had spent vital 66 minutes at the crease prolonging the Bengal agony.