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Collin Matiza Sports Editor
THE wheels finally came off Cara Black and Sania Mirza when they were knocked out in the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles competition at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne yesterday.
Zimbabwe’s Black and her Indian partner Mirza, who were seeded sixth at the first Grand Slam of the year, were yesterday fighting for a place in the semi-finals against the top-seeded Italian pair of Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci.
But Black and Mirza failed to brew a shocker against the world’s top women’s doubles team of Errani and Vinci who beat them 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 in a tightly-contested quarter-final tie which lasted one hour 58 minutes on the Margaret Court Arena at Melbourne Park.
According to reports from Melbourne, Black and Mirza showed no ghost of inferiority complex against their much-fancied opponents who they stretched to three sets and stealing the second set from them in a match which kept the fans spellbound for close to two hours.
It looked like defending champions Errani and Vinci were going to have a stroll in the park and record another routine victory when they took the first set 6-2 in 31 minutes, but Black and Mirza refused to be intimidated as they came out fighting tenaciously in the second, winning it 6-3 to push the match to three sets.
Black and Mirza continued to give as much as they got in the third and final set, before surrendering it 4-6 after putting up a spirited challenge against the world number ones who will be the first to admit that they were given a good run for their money by their sixth-seeded opponents yesterday.
Errani and Vinci, however, fired 44 winners against their opponents’ 39 and made 16 unforced errors while Black and Mirza committed 24 of them as they waved goodbye to their chances of booking a place in the last four in Melbourne.
The Indo-Zimbabwean pair was leading 4-2 in the final set and looked favourites to qualify for the semis, but the Italian team showed why they are the top-ranked team in the tournament by winning four consecutive games to wrap up the match.
The sixth seeds would be disappointed with their performance, especially after coming so close. They hit 39 winners to their opponents’ 44 but it was the number of unforced errors (24) they made that would be the worrying bit.
Another cause for concern would be their failure to convert break-point opportunities. Sania-Black won 15 break-point chances, same as Errani and Vinci, but managed to convert just six. The top seeds will now take on the winners of the match between fourth seeds Kveta Peschke-Katarina Srebotnik and the unseeded team of Jarmila Gajdosova and Ajla Tomljanovic.
Online Reporter