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Wimbledon: Sania, Bopanna in quarters; Paes knocked out
Wimbledon, July 6
Indian tennis players Rohan
Bopanna and Sania Mirza entered the men's and women's doubles
quarter-finals, while Leander Paes was knocked out in the men's doubles
of the Wimbledon Championships here on Monday.
Bopanna with his
Romanian partner Florin Mergea earned a hard fought victory against the
Polish-Belarusian pair of Lukasz Kubot and Max Mirnyi 7-6(4), 6-7(5),
7-6(5), 7-6 (8) after an epic battle that stretched for three hours and
20 minutes.
Sania with her Swiss partner Martina Hingis needed
only an hour and seven minutes to win 6-4, 6-3 in a third round tie
against Spanish 16th seeds Anabel Medina Garrigues and Arantxa Parra
Santonja.
Paes partnering Canada's Daniel Nestor lost to
Brazilian Bruno Soares and Austrian Alexander Peya 3-6, 5-7, 6-3, 6-2,
2-6 in a battle which lasted two hours and 42 minutes.
Sixth-seeded
Bopanna-Mergea fought hard as the match was evenly contested all the
way through, as indicated by the scoreline, with each of the four sets
contested stretching to tiebreakers as both the teams found it difficult
to break the opponents' serves.
The two teams matched each other
shot to shot and the statistics were almost identical. But
Bopanna-Mergea edged out their opponents, though marginally, in the
unforced errors and total points to claim the contest.
The
Indian-Romanian pair forced their opponents to 18 unforced errors, three
more than them, and won 169 points compared to 166 by the
Polish-Belarusian duo.
But the winning duo hit 22 aces and 35
winners, way more than the vanquished team's nine and 20, respectively,
which settled the fate of the keen contest.
In the quarters,
Bopanna-Mergea will face the winner of the match between top seeded
American brothers duo of Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan and the Croatian-New
Zealand pair of Mate Pavic and Michael Venus.
Sania and Martina
were easily the stronger pair, winning more points on their first
serves, having four times the number of winners to their opponents and
also winning five break points in comparison to three taken by Anabel
and Arantxa.
They also won 59 of the 104 points played in the match.
In
the last game of the contest, where Sania was serving for the match,
the top seeded duo easily won four straight points to seal the match and
enter the Round of 8.
On the other hand, Paes and Nestor who were seeded 11th, lost to eighth seed Bruno Soares and Alexander Peya.
Soares
and Peya started the match on a positive note winning 13 out of 17
first serve points, also earning the only break point to take the first
set 6-3.
The second set saw similar results in favour of the
eighth seeds as they played aggressively and winning two out of two
break points to win the set and go two set-up in the match.
The
11th seeds Paes and Nestor returned strongly in the third set as they
won 13 out of 15 first serve points and winning two break points out of
four to take the third set 6-3.
The fourth set also saw positive results coming their way as some hard-fought tennis helped them level things up.
The
fifth set saw Soares and Peya coming back to rhythm as they again
played aggressively winning 19 out of 23 first serve points and also
winning two crucial break points out of four to seal the fifth set and
the match and enter the quarter-finals in style.
In the boys' singles, India's Sumit Nagal lost to Argentine Juan Pablo Ficovich 7-5, 2-6, 4-6 in the first round.
Sumit
got off to a positive start winning two break points and thus winning
the first set 7-5, but the Argentine came back strongly into the match
in the second set winning 10 out of 11 first serve points and winning
two out of three break points to level things up.
The third set
also saw Ficovich starting aggressively delivering two aces at a crucial
time and earning a break point which sealed the math for him.