Rediff

Melbourne, Jan 28: Sania Mirza and Mahesh Bhupathi rallied to beat the Canadian duo of Aleksandra Wozniak and Daniel Nestor and seal a semi-final berth in the mixed doubles event at the Australian Open in Melbourne on Wednesday.

The unseeded Indian pair overcame a first-set lapse to carve out a 3-6, 6-4, 10-5 win in one hour and 15 minutes.

Among the juniors, top seed Yuki Bhambri extended his winning run to the quarter-finals after defeating 13th seed Croat Dino Marcan 6-3, 6-1 in the third round of the junior boys' singles competition.

Sania and Bhupathi, runners-up last year, dropped their serve twice in the first set and wasted one break point to hand the opener to their opponents.

In the next set, they missed chances aplenty but were successful in converting three breakpoints out of the seven to make it one set all. In the super-tie breaker, the Indians held their nerves to emerge winners. They next face the Czech pair of Iveta Benesova and Lukas Dlouhy.