Sania Mirza remains the only Indian in fray at the Australian Open 2022 contesting in the mixed doubles with her American partner Rajeev Ram.
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Veteran Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna and his Croatian partner Darija Jurak Schreiber crashed out of the Australian Open 2022 in the first round of their mixed doubles tie on Saturday. The Indo-Croatian pair lost 6-1 4-6 9-11 in one hour and three minutes to Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev and Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok. Bopanna and Schrieber made a solid start to the match by registering only one unforced error while converting two of the three breakpoints but failed to keep the momentum going throughout the match. The second set saw Bopanna and Schrieber broken thrice with the Indian failing to hold his serve to concede a 2-4 lead.
The Indo-Croatian pair took the next two games but their opponent captured the game to take the match into the super tie-breaker. It turned out to be a neck-and-neck affair in the super tie-breaker as Bopanna and his partner took a 9-6 lead but their opponent took three consecutive match points to close the match.
The Indo-American pair of Sania Mirza and Rajeev Ram will take on the fellow unseeded duo of M.Middelkoop-E.Perez in the second round match on Sunday.
Mirza and Ram defeated the Serbian team of Aleksandra Krunic and Nikola Cacic 6-3, 7-6(3) in an opening round match of the mixed doubles category that lasted for 69 minutes on Thursday The result comes a day after the most accomplished Indian women’s star announced that she will be retiring from the game after the 2022 season. Her partner Ram, is meanwhile, the defending champion at the event as he won the previous season of mixed doubles category with his Czech partner Barbora Krejcikova.
The Indo-American pair had a chance to take the lead in the second game but Mirza missed out on the opportunity. The pair again got a chance off a serve from Krunic but Mirza could not finish the point with a volley before earning the break on the deciding point. The American looked solid with his serves with the Indian dishing out points through her volleys to seal the first set with comparative ease.
The second set was, meanwhile, tied at 5-5. But Mirza did well with her serve to take the match to the tie-breaker. The Serbian team lost a point each on their respective serves to hand the Indo-American pair a first round win.
Incidentally, Mirza was supposed to partner with Ram, at Australian Open 2020 but had partnered Rohan Bopanna instead after the American had pulled out due to injury.
