Sania-Shuai advance, Ramkumar crashes out of Cincinnati Masters

Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and her Chinese partner Peng Shuai advanced to the quarter-finals of the Cincinnati Masters following a straight-set victory in the women's doubles clash here.

The fourth seeded Indo-Chinese duo romped home with a comfortable 7-5 6-4 win over Germany's Julia Görges and Ukraine's Olga Savchuk in a last-16 clash that lasted one and a half hour on Wednesday.

Sania and Shuai will now face Romanian combo of Irina-Camelia Begu and Raluca Olaru for a place in the last four, later on Thursday.

Meanwhile, India's Ramkumar Ramanathan crashed out of the tournament after going down to American wild card Jared Donaldson in the second round men's singles tie.

Ramkumar lost 4-6 6-2 4-6 to the No.60-ranked Donaldson on Wednesday. It was Ramkumar's second consecutive defeat against the American, having lost to him in the second round of the French Open qualifier in 2015.

Among others, Rohan Bopanna will be seen in action in his second round match with partner Ivan Dodig in the men's doubles later on Thursday.

Bopanna and Dodig face the team of Colombia's Juan Sebastian Cabal and Italian Fabio Fognini, who both are top-25 singles players.

Earlier, Leander Paes had suffered a first round exit with partner Alexander Zverev, losing a tight match to Spanish pair of Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez.

--IANS

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