The Indian duo of Sania and Bopanna entered the quarterfinals of the mixed doubles event of tennis competition with a straight-set win over Australian pair of Samantha Stosur and John Peers.
Advertisement
Sania and Bopanna subdued Britain’s Andy Murray and Heather Watson with remarkable ease to breeze into the mixed doubles semifinals with a 6-4 6-4 win in just 67 minutes.
Rio de Janeiro: Medal hopes for India in Rio Olympics were kept alive by tennis duo Sania Mirza-Rohan Bopanna and boxer Vikas Krishan Yadav on Friday as they moved ahead in their respective games amid the continued flop show by the Indian contingent.
The subsequent games went with the serve before Bopanna held his serve to win the set and the match. All eyes will be on these two as they walk in the court, to fight for the bronze medal.
The Indians won the first set quite comfortably before squandering the lead and going down 6-2, 2-6, 3-10 in one hour and 17 minutes on Saturday.
A former singles number one, Swiss Hingis partnered Indian Mirza for the first time at the Indian Wells Open previous year and the self-styled “Santina” team went on to claim 14 titles, including wins at Wimbledon, and the US and Australian Opens.
Powerful serves from the racquet of Bopanna meant that the Indians only conslidated the break.
The story repeated itself in the second set with India dominating the exchanges.
The US pair broke Sania’s service twice in the fourth and eighth game of the second set.
Indian started on an ominous note as Bopannna was broken in the second game of the match. “Unfortunately we were not able to produce our best today”, she said adding that as athletes “we have to get over losses and try to bounce back”.
The Indian duo went on to break Hradecka to lead 3-1.
Indian women’s hockey team also put up a lacklustre performance, slumping to a 0-3 defeat against US in its penultimate Group B match to lose its third successive game.
Lucie-Stepanek then consolidated their position, holding their serve, to improve to 3-0 in a hard-fought game.
Advertisement
Sania will be playing in her third Olympics and has the doubles experience of 37 titles, which include six Grand Slam trophies. Although, after the first set Sania and Bopanna finds it too hot to handle the counter-attacking of the Venu. Mirza became the dominant player on the court with her blistering forehands which did most of the destruction, setting up the shots for Bopanna to put away.
