Australian Open: Bopanna-Dabrowski battle into mixed doubles quarters

Indian tennis ace Rohan Bopanna and his Canadian partner Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada produced a spirited fight back to book their place in the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles event at the season-opening Australian Open here on Tuesday.

After winning the first set, the Indo-Canadian unseeded pair went down in the second before rebounding strongly in the tie-breaker against the Polish-Taiwanese team of Lukasz Kubot and Chan Yung-jan in a exhilarating second-round contest that lasted one hour and 16 minutes.

The final score of a three-set affair read 6-4, 5-7, 10-3 in favour of Bopanna and Dabrowski.

Bopanna and Dabrowski will now lock horns with the winners of the another second-round game between Saisai Zheng-Alexander Peya and Sania Mirza-Ivan Dodig.

Yesterday, Leander Paes and his Swiss partner Martina Hingis also sealed a quarter-final berth in the mixed doubles event after clinching a comfortable 6-2, 6-3 win over Australian duo of Matt Reid and Casey Dellacqua in a one-sided second-round contest that lasted just 54 minutes on Rod Laver Arena.