Sania Mirza during her quarter final match against Marion Bartoli in Osaka on Friday. (AFP)

Osaka: Sania Mirza advanced to the Japan Open semi-finals on Friday after her second-seeded French opponent Marion Bartoli retired midway through the quarter final due to a shoulder injury with the Indian leading 6-4, 2-0 here.

With Bartoli hampered by a right shoulder injury, Sania controlled the proceedings in the hour-long match, although the Indian said she did not play all that well.

“You always like to win on match point, so it was unfortunate but I felt I was playing well and was in control. At the end of the day, a win is a win. The big thing for me is that I was outplaying a top-15 player, who was in good form,” Sania said.

Sania will next play fourth seed Francesca Schiavone, who didn’t even need to take the court as her seventh-seeded rival Melinda Czink withdrew due to a right foot injury.

Sania faced eight break points in the first set but managed to save seven of them.

“I’m pleased that after two weeks of not playing my best, I’m finishing on a high and have made the semi-finals. I’m playing a good friend next,” Sania said.

Sania and Schiavone have played twice before, with the Italian losing the first set in both meetings but coming back to win both in three setters.

Sania’s run at the current event has been anything but ordinary.

The Hyderabad girl sailed into the quarter finals after scoring a straight-sets win over Ukraine’s Viktoriya Kutuzova Wednesday.

Sania defeated Kutuzova 6-4, 6-3 in a contest that lasted an hour and 23 minutes.

The victory seems the more remarkable because both Sania and Viktoriya had served badly in the opening set, committing five double faults each.

But Sania managed to convert a crucial break point to go 1-0 up.

Although, at No.89 in the latest WTA rankings, the Ukrainian Kutuzova isn’t the toughest opponent one can come across on the tennis court, to Sania’s credit it has to be said that the No.61 recovered quickly and took control of the game.

In the second set, Sania cut back on her service errors, saving three of the four break points she faced.

It was the same story in her first round match where Sania overcame frequent doubles partner Shahar Peer on Monday.

That match too went on for more than an hour with Sania first mounting a fightback before overhauling her opponent.

Sania broke Peer twice but was herself broken thrice to lose the first set.

In the second set, Sania saved all three break points to draw parity and maintained her superiority in the decider to settle the issue in her favour.

What has shone through the Indian ace’s game therefore is a determination and the desire to win that has seen her repeatedly come back from desperate situations.

In the doubles though the second seed pair of Sania and Vania King suffered a shock straight-sets defeat at the hands of the unseeded French pair of Julie Coin and Mathilde Johansson to see their campaign in Japan come to a premature end.

The Indo-American pair had lost 4-6, 2-6 in the quarter final after battling for an hour and seven minutes.