Melbourne, Jan 24 (Inditop.com) India’s Sania Mirza and her Spanish partner Virginia Ruano Pascual bowed out of women’s doubles in the Australian Open tennis at the Melbourne Park here Sunday.
The 10th-seeded pair of Sania and Pascual went down 4-6, 3-6 to seventh seeds Alisa Kleybanova of Russia and Italian Francesca Schiavone in the third round.
With this loss, Sania’s Australian Open campaign is over. The 23-year-old crashed out of the singles in the first round and had to pull out of the mixed doubles because of calf injury to Mahesh Bhupathi. Sania and Bhupathi were the defending champions in mixed doubles.
Meanwhile, India’s Rishika Sunkara, who qualified to the main draw of the girls singles Friday, moved to the second round beating Japanese Miyu Kato 6-4, 6-2.
Sunkara, 16, next plays third-seeded Russian Daria Gavrilova.
The Indian challenge in boys’ singles was over with Vaidik Munshaw going down fighting to 13th-seeded Belgian Arthur De Greef 4-6, 6-7(5).
rounak