Melbourne: Indian tennis stars Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna advanced to the quarterfinals of the women’s and mixed doubles events respectively after notching up contrasting victories with their partners at the Australian Open here today.
On a record winning streak, Sania and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis continued to rule the roost as they brushed aside Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova and Italy’s Roberta Vinci 6-1 6-3 in a contest that lasted an hour and 21 minutes.
The top-seeded pair will next take on the 12th seeded American-German combo of Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Coco Vandeweghe next.
Bopanna and Yung-Jan Chan of Chinese Taipei also continued their winning run, edging out Czech Andrea Hlavackova and Lukasz Kubot of Poland 4-6 6-3 (10-6) in a mixed doubles match.
Among other Indians, in Junior Girls’ Singles category, 10th seed Pranjala Yadlapalli saw off Mira Antonitsch Austria 7-6(5) 6-3, while Karman Thandi defeated Hungary’s Panna Udvardy 6-4 6-2 in another match.
Karman will face Australian Sara Tomic, while Pranjala will meet Anastasia Potapova of Russia.
In junior girls’ doubles, Karman and Pranjala combined to prevail over the local pair of Petra Hule and Selina Turulja 6-4 6-3. The fifth seeded Indian pair will face the Chinese combo of Siqi Cao and Jia Ren in the next round.
Tomorrow, in mixed doubles, top seeds Sania and Croatian Ivan Dodig will face Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan, while Leander Paes and Hingis will take on USA’s Sloane Stephens and Jean-Julien Rojer of The Netherlands.
PTI
