Sania-Black defeat Hradecka-Zheng to reach Indian Wells final

Indian Wells (California), March 14 (IANS): India’s Sania Mirza and her Zimbabwean partner Cara Black stormed into the women’s doubles final at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament here today.

The fifth seeded Sania-Clara pair Thursday won 6-4, 3-6, 10-7 against the eighth seeded duo of Czech Lucie Hradecka and Chinese Jie Zheng.

The contest was dominated by the return of serve; there were as many as 11 breaks throughout the match. The first set itself saw seven breaks, with each team attacking the serve fearlessly and putting away the short replies at the net. Sania and Cara got the decisive break towards the end of the set though, and pocketed it 6-4.

Hradecka and Zheng put up a much better show in the second, losing their serve just once and breaking the opponents three times. They were particularly severe on the first serves of both Sania and Cara, allowing them to win only 50% of those points.

The super tie-breaker was close, and the Indo-Zimbabwean pair held their nerve to seal it 10-7, ensuring their passage to the finals in the process.

Sania and Clara will now face the winner of the other semi-final between top seed Su-Wei Hsieh of Chinese Taipei and Chinese Shuai Peng and the wild card pair of Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia and Samantha Stosur of Australia, which will be held tomorrow.