Indian tennis players Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna got into the second round Australian Open 2023 Mixed doubles tournament at Melbourne Park on Saturday.
Rio 2016 semi-finalists Saina Mirza and Rohan Bopanna defeated Australian duo Jaimee Fourlis and Luke Saville 7-5, 6-3 in an hour and 14 minutes.
The Indian pair suffered an early defeat in the match, breaking it in game four. Mirza and Bopanna responded quickly and won six of the next eight games to win the first set.
With momentum on their side, Mirza and Bopanna held control in the second set and defeated Jaimee Fourlis and Luke Saville in games seven and nine to win the set and the match.
Sania Mirza, six-time Grand Slam champion and 2017 French Open mixed doubles winner Rohan Bopanna will face the winner of Nicole Melichar-Martinez/Matwe Middelkoop and Ellen Perez/Harri Heliovaara in the round of 16.
Sania Mirza once won the Australian Open title in mixed doubles in 2009 with Mahesh Bhupathi.
Previously, Sania Mirza and Anna Danilina advanced to the second round of the women’s doubles, defeating the Hungarian-American duo of Dalma Galfi and Bernarda Pera.
Meanwhile, Rohan Bopanna was eliminated from the men’s doubles event along with his partner Matthew Ebden after losing on Friday to Austria’s Lucas Miedler and Alexander Erler 6-3, 7-5.
Earlier in the day, Indian pair N Sriram Balaji and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, who entered the Australian Open as an alternate pairing, stunned fifth seeds Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajick 7-6(6), 2-6, 6-4. second round of men’s doubles.
The Indian duo, who finished second at the recently concluded Maharashtra Open, will now face French duo Jeremy Chady and Fabrice Martin in the second round.
