The third seeded women’s doubles pair of Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova today took a straight sets win over the sixth-seeded Kazakh – American pair of Yaroslava Shvedova and Vania King.
Mirza and Strycova, for whom this is the first Miami Open together, won their quarter-final match in just over an hour, breaking their rivals a whopping five times in the first set; they were broken back twice, however, with neither pair paticularly strong on serve in the first set.
But the winning pair came back resurgently in the second set, and broke their rivals three times in the second set; King and Shvedova did not win any points on their second serve.
The Indo-Czech pair did not have the easiest start to the tournament, taken to tiebreak in their opening match against Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands and Czech partner Renata Voracova, and then began on the wrong foot in their Round of 16 match against the unseeded Timea Babos and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova; the Russo-Hungarian doubles pair won the first set 6-1, immediately looking as though they would outclass Mirza and Strycova.
The third seeds came back in the deciding tiebreak to take victory.
Mirza stands to gain points from her performance this year; the Indian former World No. 1 was top seeded with then-partner Martina Hingis at the tournament last year, but the pair suffered a shock second-round loss.
The Indian this year also lost her World No. 1 doubles rank after winning the year-opening WTA tournament in Brisbane, where she was top seeded with Mattek-Sands; the title win gave Mattek-Sands the top rank, with the American still No. 1.
Mirza is currently at seventh, with former partner Martina Hingis at 8th.
Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova will now play fourth seeded Andrea Hlavackova and Shuai Peng in the semi-finals; Martina Hingis and partner Yung-jan Chan will contest their quarter-final today, setting up the possibility of a Mirza vs Hingis final in Miami.
