Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna entered the quarter finals of the mixed doubles in the Australian Open on Monday.
The Indian duo defeated the Uruguayan and Japanese pair of Ariel Behar and Makato Ninomiya 6-4, 7-6 (11-9).
Sania and Bopanna found themselves in the driver’s seat after earning their first service early in the first set. However, the opponent earned a break back to make it 2-2 in the opener. At 3-3, Sania and Bopanna broke their opposition’s serve yet again and didn’t look back in the first set.
At 3-3 in the second set, the Sania-Bopanna pair again put pressure on their opponent with a break of serve. But soon, the pair of Behar and Ninomiya earned the break back to make it 4-4 in the second set.
The final set tie-breaker went deep but in the end the Indians held their nerves to seal victory.
The Indians will now lock horns with the Latvian and Spanish pair of Jelena Ostapenko and David Vega Hernandez in the quarter final.
Sania is playing her last grand slam as the six-time grand slam champion announced earlier this month that she will retire at the Dubai Tennis Championships which begins on February 19.
In women’s doubles, Sania and her Kazakh partner AnnaDanilina ended their campaign after suffering a loss at the hands of the Ukrainian-Belgian duo of Alison VanUytvanck and Anhelina Kalinina in the second-round.
Written with inputs from PTI
