WTA finals | Sania-Hingis enter semis ; Kerber continues dominance

Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis had parted ways after a poor run this year all the way to the Wimbledon where they failed to defend their title. The pair, who had gone on a 41-match unbeaten streak during their best phase, had, however, confirmed that they would join hands to defend their WTA year-ender title.

Mirza-Hingis, seeded second this year, began their campaign today against the Chan sisters - the duo held a good head-to-head record of 5-1 over the sixth-seeded pair with their last win coming at the same WTA year-ender in the semifinals enroute to their title.

Sania and Hingis appeared to have no difficulty playing together again as the duo took the first game, and threatened to break the Chan sisters on the second. But their opponents held serve, and the rest of the set saw both pairs holding their serves until 5-5.

It was the Chan sisters, who broke the monotony finally winning the 11th game to go up 6-5. However, Sania and Hingis broke back to enforce the tie-breaker. In a neck-to-neck affair, Sania and Hingis held their nerves to finally win the tie-breaker 12-10 to win the set that lasted an hour long.

Mirza-Hingis started the second set brightly by breaking their opponents to go up 2-1. But, the Chan sisters broke back immediately only to lose their serve again. Sania and Hingis held serve to finally take the lead at 4-2, but the pendulum swung back to 4-4 when the Chan sisters broke back. Finally, Sania and Hingis managed the breakthrough to win the 11th game to go up 6- before holding serve to win the match.

 In the singles event, World number one Angelique Kerber beat USA's Madison Keys 6-3 6-3 in a one-sided affair to book a place in the semi-finals. As a result, Slovakia's seventh seed Dominika Cibulkova also secured a place in the final four, having beaten Romania's Simona Halep 6-3 7-6 (7-5) earlier .

Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova, will play Cibulkova in the last four, while Kerber will face the winner of Friday's final round-robin match between Poland's defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska and Czech fourth seed Karolina Pliskova.