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Melbourne: Sania Mirza had a productive day at the Australian Open on Monday as the Indian ace reached the quarterfinals of both the women’s doubles and the mixed doubles events with Elena Vesnina and Mahesh Bhupathi respectively.
Sania and Bhupathi, the 2009 mixed doubles champions, defeated Czech Iveta Benesova and Austria’s Jurgen Melzer 3-6, 6-4, 12-10 in the second-round match.
The sixth-seeded Indian team took one hour and 11 minutes to beat their fighting opponents. They will next take on America’s Liezel Huber and British Colin Fleming. They are heading towards a potential title clash with fourth seed Rohan Bopanna and American Lisa Raymond, who got the better of the Australian pair of Casey Dellacqua and Matthew Ebden 6-4, 6-2 in their second round match. Bopanna and Raymond await the winner of other second round clash between the pairs of Su-Wei Hsieh/Marcin Matkowski and Vesnina/ Leander Paes.
Earlier, Sania and her Russian partner Vesnina downed 12th seeded Jarmila Gajdosova of Australia and Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the U.S.A. 7-5, 6-3 to make the women’s doubles quarterfinals.
They now have a tough next round as they face the second seeded American pair of Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond.
Meanwhile, in the junior competition, India tasted their first victory when Rutuja Bhosale and Indonesia’s Aldila Sutjiadi defeated India’s Ratnika Batra and Australia’s Georgiana Ruhrig 1-6, 6-4, 10-5 to advance to the girls’ doubles second round. (PTI)
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