The top seeded tennis pair of Sania Mirza and Ivan Dodig totally outclassed defending champions Leander Paes and Martina Hingis to march into the mixed doubles semifinals of the Australian Open at Melbourne Park here on Thursday.
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The Indo-Croatian pair claimed the first set in a tie-breaker and closed out the tie in the second.
Raonic won the first set on his second set point when he challenged an out call on his serve, and replays showed to have hit most of the line.
The turning point came when the Czechs, who triumphed in two majors together, failed to serve out the first at 5-4.
The impressive winning streak of 36 matches she and Mirza are now on is the longest in women’s doubles since 1990, although they are still way off the remarkable 109-match run by Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver from June 1983 to July 1985.
The Planet No. 1 couple went berserk within the next collection and didn’t look back from thereon.
But she returned in 2013 to play doubles and is now just a French Open away from holding all four Grand Slam women’s doubles titles at once after she and Mirza also won at Wimbledon and the US Open past year.
There was a chink of light when the Czech pair broke Hingis at 2-5 as she was serving for the championship, but they were then broken themselves as the accolades went to their opponents.
This is their third consecutive grand slam after winning the Wimbledon and US Open past year.
However, Rohan Bopanna’s campaign ended with a shock defeat in the mixed doubles quarterfinals with partner Yung-Jan Chan of Chinese Taipei.
World number two Andy Murray reached his fifth Australian Open final after an epic five-set battle with 13th seed Milos Raonic.
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Angelique Kerber checked her phone and confirms she received a text message from Steffi Graf ahead of the Australian Open final against Serena Williams on Saturday. A double fault by Sania at 30-40 gave the break back to the Czech players, who were now leading 3-2.
