Sania Mirza and Cara Black win their 1st title of the year at the Portugal Open

Cara Black and Sania Mirza

Oeiras (Portugal), May 3 (IANS): India’s Sania Mirza and her Zimbabwean partner Cara Black clinched their first WTA title of the season beating Eva Hrdinova and Valeria Solovyeva in the women’s doubles final of the Portugal Open here on Saturday.

Sania and Cara won 6-4, 6-3 against the Czech-Russian pair in an exciting clash that lasted one hour and 18 minutes.

For Sania and Cara the win was an atonement for their losses in the finals of Indian Wells and Stuttgart.

The top-seeded pair of Sania and Cara took an early 3-1 lead. Eva and Valeria tried to come back strongly and they broke the top seeds to snatch the lead by the seventh game.

Sania and Cara then broke Eva and Valeria in the eighth game to make it 4-4, and then one more time in the 10th to clinch the first set convincingly.

In the second set, they again traded a break each and were level at 3-3. But Cara committed an untimely double fault and the top seeds had to pay the price, losing a break point. However, they were soon up 4-3 again with a break of serve and Sania served out the match in the ninth game.

Sania and Cara shared the prize money of 9,919 euros and also earned 280 ranking points each.