Ace Indian tennis players Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna marched into the mixed doubles semi finals of the Australian Open on Tuesday.
The Indian pair was to play against Latvian and Spanish pair of Jelena Ostapenko and David Vega Hernandez but entered the last 4 automatically after getting a walkover.
The Indian duo earlier defeated Japan’s Makoto Ninomiya and Uruguay’s Ariel Behar 6-4, 7-6 (11-9) in their second-round match to set up a quarterfinal clash with Latvian-Spanish duo Jelena Ostapenko and David Vega Hernandez on Tuesday.
Sania and Bopanna, the Rio Olympic semi finalists, had earlier beaten Australia’s Jaimee Fourlis and Luke Saville in the first round.
Mirza and Bopanna will clash with United Kingdom’s Neal Skupski and America’s Desirae Krawczyk in the semi finals.
Sania is playing her last Grand Slam as the six-time Grand Slam champion earlier this month announced that she will retire from professional tennis at Dubai Tennis Championships, a WTA 1000 event, which begins on February 19.
In the women’s doubles, Sania and her Kazakh partner Anna Danilina ended their Australian Open campaign after suffering a loss at the hands of the Ukrainian-Belgian duo of Alison Van Uytvanck and Anhelina Kalinina in the second-round on Sunday.
In the men’s doubles, Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden too crashed out of the tournament on Friday after their first round loss.
Another India pair, N Sriram Balaji and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, who entered the Australian Open as an alternate pair, also bowed out after suffering a 4-6, 4-6 loss against Frenchmen Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin in the second round, ending India’s challenge in men’s doubles on Sunday.
Watch Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna clash with UK-US duo Neal Skupski and Desirae Krawczyk at the Australian Open today at 4.45pm (AEST).Â
Read more: Australian Open: Sania Mirza bows out in women’s doubles
