Sania moves into French Open mixed doubles semis

India's tennis star Sania Mirza and her mixed doubles partner Ivan Dodig beat Jan Chan and Max Mirnyi to move into the semi-finals of the French Open tennis tournament here on Thursday.

The second seeds won the contest in the tie-breaker with a 6-1, 3-6, 10-6 on Court 2.

From the beginning, Sania and her Croatian partner were able to get into their stride and pocketed the first game quite easily against the Chinese Taipei-Belarusian pair.

They then broke their opponents to move ahead 2-0 in the first set. And though Chan and Mirnyi tried catching up, the Indo-Croatian pair remained ahead.

Before long it was 5-0 and Sania-Ivan ensured there were no hiccups as they pocketed the opening set 6-1.

Jan-Max scripted a turnaround in the second set. The Chinese Taipei-Belarusian pair rallied back into the contest by pocketing three back to back games to march to a 4-1 lead.

Sania-Ivan broke back to reduce the margin to 3-5 but Jan-Max sealed the set by winning their service game to stretch the match into a deciding tie-breaker.

The Sania-Ivan pair was brilliant in the tie breaker and had things under control from the very beginning. They led 8-5 at one stage and finally bought the shutters down at 10-6.

--IANS

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