Mirza-Soares and Paes-Hingis enter Australian Open semis

Leander Paes and Martina Hingis

Melbourne, January 28 (IANS)

Indian tennis stars Leander Paes and Sania Mirza reached the mixed doubles semi-finals after they won their respective matches at the Australian Open here on Wednesday.

Top seeded duo Sania and Bruno Soares marched into the semis after beating unseeded local pair Casey Dellacqua and John Peers 6-2, 6-2 in a last-eight match which lasted 53 minutes on Court No.2 of Melbourne Park.

A little while later, Paes, partnering veteran Martina Hingis of Switzerland, defeated the Czech-Austrian combine of Andrea Hlavackova and Alexander Peya 6-3, 6-1 at the Rod Laver Arena. The quarter-final lasted only 52 minutes.

Sania and Bruno started their match on a bright note, breaking their opponents twice to claim the first set 6-2 in just 23 minutes. The Indo-Brazilian pair continued their ascendancy by leading 4-2 and going on to win the second set with an identical first set score in another 30 minutes.

The victors hit 18 winners and committed 10 unforced errors on their way to victory. They are scheduled to play the winner of the quarter-final between third seeds Kristina Mladenovic of France and Canada's Daniel Nestor and fifth seeds Cara Black of Zimbabwe and Juan Sebastian Cabal of Colombia.

Later, seventh seeds Paes and Hingis easily reached home by breaking their opponents five times, four more than the fourth seeds.

Next up, they will play the winners of the match between Su-Wei Hsieh (Chinese Taipei) and Pablo Cuevas (Uruguay) and Slovenia-Brazilian second seeds Katarina Srebotnik and Marcelo Melo.

Meanwhile in the boys' singles, India's Sumit Nagal went down to Australia's Marc Polmans 1-6, 1-6 in the third round in just 45 minutes.