Melbourne: Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles cruised into the semi-finals of men’s doubles but the top-seeded mixed doubles pair of Leander Paes and Cara Black were shocked in the second round of the Australian Open here on Tuesday.

The third-seeded Indo-Bahamian duo of Bhupathi and Knowles overcame a second set deficit to beat the Spanish pair of Feliciano Lopez and Fernando Verdasco 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 in one hour and 28 minutes.

The quarter-final clash saw Bhupathi and Knowles break the Spanish pair thrice while dropping their own serve twice.

The winners committed just four unforced errors to 11 of their opponents. They next play Lukasz Kubot of Poland and Oliver Marach of Austria.

Paes and Black were outplayed 1-6, 5-7 by the unseeded Swiss-South African combine in just 64 minutes. The winners broke Paes and Black twice each in both sets while the Indo-Zimbabwean pair could break their rivals only once in the second set.

In men’s doubles, Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy beat locals Paul Hanley and Jordan Kerr 6-2 7-5 on Monday to move into the quarters.

Among juniors, top seed Yuki Bhambri reached the pre-quarter finals of the singles and quarter finals of the doubles with Chinese Taipei’s Liang-Chi Huang.

In singles second round, Yuki beat local Stephen Hoh 7-6 (1) 6-0 while in the doubles he and Liang beat Italian Marco Bortolotti and Vladzimir Kruk of Belarus 6-3, 6-4.

However, Kaza Vinayak Sharma lost his second round match 1-6, 1-6 to Justin Eleveld of The Netherlands.

(PTI)