Sania Mirza and Chia-Jung Chuang earned a hard-fought 6-4, 6-2 win over Americans Jill Craybas and Carly Gullickson to advance to the women's doubles second round at the Wimbledon championships here on Thursday.
The Indo-Taipei pair won after 79-minute battle against unseeded Craybas and Gullickson, who ran out of steam after putting up a good fight against the 15th seeds initially.
In an intriguing first set, Sania and Chuang faced stiff competition from the Americans and had to wait till the eighth breakpoint of the fourth game to get their first break.
The Americans saved seven back-to-back breakpoints but the effort wasn't enough against their equally unrelenting rivals.
However, the compliment was returned immediately in the next game as Americans converted their second chance. Sania and Chuang were, however, unfazed and broke their rivals at love in the sixth game to get back the lead.
But the Americans regrouped and broke their fancied rivals once more to remain in contention.
The seeded pair, however, relied on its experience broke Craybas and Gullickson at love in the 10th game to wrap up the first set.
The gruelling fight entered the second set and both the pairs continued the entertaining tussle. But this time, Sania and Chuang dominated and broke their rivals in the sixth and eighth games to march to the second round.
They next face the winners of the match between Lourdes Dominguez Lino/Aranta Parra Santonja and Alla Kudryavtseva/Monica Niculescu.
Sania-Chuang in 2nd round of women's doubles
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