Australian Open: Sania Mirza And Rohan Bopanna Win Matches, Enter Second Round

Rohan Bopanna and Uruguay's Pablo Cuevas defeated Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil and Maximo Gonzalez of Argentina 6-4, 7-6 (7/4) to enter the men's doubles second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday. The Indo-Uruguay combine dominated the match, breaking their opponents' serve once in each set. Belluci-Gonzalez broke back in the second set to take it to a tie-breaker which was sealed by Bopanna and Cuevas. In the next round, they will now take on Australian pair Alex Bolt and Bradley Mousley, who defeated Robin Haase and Florian Mayer 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 in their first match.

In the women's doubles, Sania Mirza and her Czech partner Barbora Strycova registered an easy 6-3, 6-1 win against the British pair of Jocelyn Rae and Anna Smith. Sania and Barbora were sublime in the second set, breaking the British pair thrice. They next play the winners of the first-round match between the Aussie pair of Kimberly Birrell -Priscilla Hon and the Australian-Chinese team of Samantha Stosur and Shuai Zhang.

Sania is looking to clinch her second consecutive Australian Open women's doubles title this year. She won the crown last year partnering Martina Hingis of Switzerland. Sania has traditionally done well at the Australian Open, having won both the women's doubles and mixed doubles titles.

Bopanna has had a good start to the year, after he won the Chennai Open title earlier this month. Bopanna and partner Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan edged out fellow-Indians Purav Raja and Divij Sharan 6-3, 6-4 in the final on January 9.