Sania-Barbora, Bopanna-Cuevas in second round
Sania Mirza and Czech partner Barbora Strycova stormed into the women’s doubles second round at the Australian Open in Melbourne on Wednesday. Sania and Strycova were a class apart in their match against Jocelyn Rae and Anna Smith of Great Britain, dominating the match right from the word go.
The fourth-seeded Indo Czech pair won in straight sets 6-3, 6-1, in the first round, taking exactly an hour to seal the match. Sania and Strycova were sublime in the second set, breaking the British pair thrice.
Sania and Strycova next play the winners of the first round match between the Aussie pair of Kimberly Birrell -Priscilla Hon and Aussie-China team of Samantha Stosur-Shuai Zhang.
Sania started the new year with a bang, winning the title at the Brisbane International, but with another partner. She paired with Bethanie Mattek-Sands in the build-up to the Australian Open and won in Brisbane before finishing runners up at Sydney, after getting back with regular partner Strycova. Sania is looking to clinch her second consecutive Australian Open women’s doubles title this year. She won the crown last year partnering Martina Hingis of Switzerland. Sania has traditionally done well at the Australian Open, having won Down under in both doubles and mixed doubles events.
However, the Sania-Strycova pairing is pretty new and is finding their feet so to speak. In the latter half of the Grand Slam, they will find things toughter than what it was against the British pair in the opening round on Wednesday.
India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Uruguayan partner Pablo Cuevas beat Thomaz Belluci of Brazil and Maximo Gonzalez of Argentina in straight sets to storm into the men’s doubles second round.
Bopanna and Cuevas won 6-4, 7-6 in one hour and 24 minutes. The combine dominated the match, breaking their opponents serve once in each set. However, Belluci-Gonzalez broke back in the second set to take it to tiebreaker which was sealed by Bopanna and Cuevas.