Melbourne, Jan 22 (Inditop.com) India’s Sania Mirza and Leander Paes advanced with their respective partners in the while Somdev Devvarman and Prakash Amritraj were shown the door in the doubles at the Australian Open tennis at Melbourne Park here Friday.
The 10th-seeded pair of Sania and Spaniard Virginia Ruano Pascual battled past Swiss Timea Bacsinszky and Italian Tathiana Garbin 7-6(3), 6-3, to reach the third round. They next meet seventh seeds Alisa Kleybanova of Russia and Italian Francesca Schiavone.
In the mixed doubles, top seeds Paes and Zimbabwean Cara Black fought off a tough challenge from Australians Sophie Ferguson and Carsten Ball 7-5, 7-5 to enter the second round. They now play the winners of the match between Czech Andrea Hlavackova and Lukasz Kubot of Poland and American Carly Gullickson and Bernard Tomic of Australia.
However, the doubles campaign of Somdev and Amritraj ended in the second round with a tame 1-6, 3-6 loss to 11th seeds Simon Aspelin of Sweden and Paul Hanley of Australia.
rounak