Sania and Paes move up, Bhupathi-Bopanna lose

Montreal/Toronto – India’s Sania Mirza and Leander Paes have moved into the quarterfinals with their respective partners whereas their compatriots Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna lost their pre-quarterfinal match at the Rogers Cup tennis doubles.

Sania and her American partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands beat Slovak duo Dominika Cibulkova and Daniela Hantochova 6-2, 6-3, in an hour and nine minutes Friday.

Both the sets ran more or less on similar lines as the Indo-US pair had an early break in the first set to go 3-1 up but they were broken back only to find their opponents drop their service twice more to lose the set rather tamely.

In a replay of the first set, Sania and Mattek-Sands jumped to a 3-1 lead in the second, but dropped their serve again, and again they broke back to go 4-2 up. They had a match point in the sixth game, but failed to clinch it and lost the game before taking the set and the match 6-3 on their serve.

Sania and Mattek-Sands beat German Julia Goerges and her Czech Kveta Peschke 7-6 (1) and 6-3 in the first round Thursday.

The Indo-American pair, seeded seventh, needed a shade less than an hour and half to subdue Goerges and Peschke after a tough first-set tie-break.

In the men’s doubles in Toronto, fifth seeds Paes and his Austrian partner Jurgewn Melzer received a walk-over from Canadian Milos Raonic and Serb Viktor Troicki and the Indo-Austrian pair is through to the quarterfinals without entering the court as they had a first-round bye.

Paes and Melzer will Saturday take on third-seeded Polish pair Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski, who beat Mexican Santiago Gonzalez and American Scott Lipsky 7-5, 7-5.

Sixth seeds Bhupathi and Bopanna, who also got a bye in their first round match, were beaten by unseeded Australian Paul Hanley and Serb Nenad Zimonjic in straight sets, 4-6, 6-7 (6) Friday.

Hanley and Zimonjic, who in the first round had beaten Carlos Berlocq of Argentina and Japan’s Kei Nishikori 6-3, 7-5, will take on in the quarter-finals second-seeded American twins Bob and Mike Bryan who beat Croat Ivan Dodig and Marcelo Melo of Brazil 7-5, 6-2.