Sania-Barbora advance at Wuhan Open

Indian star Sania Mirza and her doubles partner Barbora Strycova defeated Gabriela Dabrowski and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez over three hard fought sets to enter the third round of the Wuhan Open tennis tournament here on Tuesday.

The Indo-Czech combination defeated their Canadian-Spanish opponents 3-6, 6-3, 10-5 in the second round encounter.

Sania paired up with Strycova after splitting from earlier women's doubles partner Martina Hingis of Switzerland.

The duo have produced a series of good performances since then. Their first tournament together was the Cincinnati Open where they defeated Hingis and CoCo Vandeweghe in the final.

They have lost just one match since then, in the US Open where they crashed out of the quarter-finals.

They won their second title last week when they won the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo last week.

The recent run of good results mean that Sania continue to be world number one in the women's doubles rankings with 9,730 points, but only five points separate her from estranged partner Hingis (9,725).

--IANS

ajb/vt