Eastbourne: Sania Mirza and Liezel Huber were made to work hard for points as they struggled past Darija Jurak and Heather Watson to move to the quarter finals of the Aegon International, here, on Tuesday.

The second seeded Indo-American pair recorded a 7-6 (4) 7-6 (3) win over unseeded Czech-British combo in one hour and 36 minutes in the first round of the $690,000 tournament, leading to Wimbledon.

Sania and Huber will now fight it out with Romania’s Monica Niculescu and Czech Republic’s Klara Zakopalova for a place in the semi-finals.

Leander Paes celebrated his 40th birthday with a victory in first round of the men’s doubles event.

Seeded third, Paes and his Czech partner Radek Stepanek advanced to the quarter finals after posting a 57, 76 (5), 106 win in one hour and 35 minutes over CroatBrazilian duo of Ivan Dodig and Marcelo Melo on the grass courts of Devonshire Park.

An early break put Sania and her partner in a comfortable position and soon they were serving for the set in the ninth game. However, they could not deliver the punch as they were down 0-40 and their rivals converted their second chance to make it 4-5 and levelled the score in the next game with a hold.

The issue was stretched to a tie-breaker and here Sania and Huber grabbed the first available opportunity to take a one-set lead.