Melbourne: Sania Mirza is through to the quarterfinals of the Australian Open tennis with compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi in the mixed doubles and Russian Elena Vesnina in the women’s doubles here on Monday.
The Indo-Russian pair won 7-5, 6-3 against the American-Australian combine of Jarmila Gajdosova and Bethanie Mattek-Sands in the third round in 81 minutes.
Sania and Elena will next face second seeds Liezel Huber of South Africa and Lisa Raymond of the US in the quarterfinals.
In the mixed doubles, Sania-Bhupathi, winners in 2009, entered the last eight with a hard fought win over the Czech-Austrian pair of Iveta Benesova and Jurgen Melzer. The super tie-break went down to the wire but the Indians held their nerve for a 3-6, 6-4, 12-10 victory.
Earlier, Rohan Bopanna reached the mixed doubles quarterfinals with Lisa Raymond, beating Australia’s Casey Dellacqua and Matthew Ebden 6-4, 6-2 in the second round. Bopanna-Raymond will play the winners of the match between Leander Paes and Elena and Su-Wei Hsieh and Marcin Matkowski. (IANS)