
Melbourne: Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis stormed into the final of the women's doubles event of the Australian Open, after notching up a comfortable straight-set win, here on Wednesday.
However, Rohan Bopanna's campaign ended with a shock defeat in the mixed doubles quarter-finals, with partner Yung-Jan Chan of Chinese Taipei.
Sania and Martina, who are on a record winning streak, continued to rule the roost as they brushed aside Julia Goerges and Karolina Pliskova, the 13th seeds, 6-1, 6-0 in just 54 minutes, at Rod Laver Arena, to enter their third successive doubles Grand Slam final.
The Indo-Swiss pair will take on the seventh seeded Czech combination of Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in the summit clash.
Sania and Martina broke their rivals twice in the first set, which lasted 26 minutes, before steamrolling the German-Czech combo in the second set. The Indo-Swiss duo won the Wimbledon and US Open titles, before winning the season ending WTA Finals in 2015.
They continued their superb form this year, extending their unbeaten run to 35 with Wednesday's semi-final win. They have also won back-to-back titles at the Brisbane and Sydney International events, before starting their Australian Open campaign.
The last four contest was going without any hiccup till 2-1, when the world's top ranked team broke their opponents in the fourth game to go 3-1 up. Sania and Martina held their service game and broke the 13th seeds' serve again in the sixth game to take a 5-1 lead.
It was only a matter of time before they sealed the set in their favour in only 26 minutes. Sania and Martina, who are both individually ranked No.1 in the world, carried the momentum into the second set to break Julia and Karolina in the first and third games to go 4-0 up.
It finally looked like the German-Czech combination would be able to get off the mark when they were 40-0 up in the fifth game, but Sania and Martina were in total demolition mode. They first brought the game to deuce and then broke their opponents for the third time in the set to make it 5-0.
Meanwhile, the Indian challenge ended in the junior girls event with the defeat of Karman Kaur Thandi and Pranjala Yadlapalli in both singles and doubles.
In the singles, Karman lost 6-3, 5-7, 5-7 to Sara Tomic of Australia in the third round, while 10th-seeded Pranjala bowed out after a 5-7, 5-7 defeat against 8th-seeded Russian Anastasia Potapova.
Later in the doubles, the fifth seeded duo of Karman and Pranjala lost 6-7 (3-7), 5-7 to the Australian pair of Maddison Inglis and Jaimee Fourlis.