Australian Open | Good day for Indian tennis as both Mirza and Bopanna win
Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna won their respective mixed doubles matches in the first round at the Australian Open to book a place in the next round. While Bopanna-Dabrowski had to face a tough challenge from their opponents, Mirza and Dodig had a rather easy outing to qualify for the second round.
After losing to the Australian pairing of Alex Bolt and Bradley Mousley in the second round of Men’s doubles, Bopanna shifted his entire focus to the mixed doubles event. The Indian and his Canadian partner Gabriela Dabrowski put their best foot forward to beat New Zealand’s Michael Venus and Slovakian Katarina Srebotnik.
Although the Kiwi-Slovakian pair pulled a set back after losing the first one, it was the Indo-Canadian duo who won the match 6-4, 6-7, 10-7 in a super tie-breaker.
Bopanna-Dabrowski won most of the crucial points of the match, converting two of their four break point opportunities compared to the one that the Venus-Srebotnik pair could manage in the match.
In the other match, second-seeded Sania Mirza and Croatian Ivan Dodig got the better of Germany’s Laura Siegemund and Croatian Mate Pavic 7-5, 6-4 to enter the second round of the mixed doubles event. It was an easy match for the Mirza-Dodig pair as they won 71 points compared to 62 claimed by their opponents. The Indo-Croat pair were wasteful in the match converting only five of the 17 break points.
Mirza-Dodig will lock horns with the winners of the clash between Chinese-Austria pair of Saisai Zheng and Alexander Peya and Australia’s Sally Peers and John Peers. Should both the Indian stars win their respective matches, they will face each other in the quarter-final of the first Grand Slam of the year.