Bopanna-Qureshi makes a winning start, Sania-Black advances

London: The Indo-Pak pair of Rohan Bopanna and Aisam ul Haq Qureshi made an impressive start to their men`s doubles campaign at the Wimbledon beating unfancied pair of Frantisek Cermak and Mikhail Elgin in straight sets 7-6 (11-9) 7-6 (10-8) 6-3 in the opening round, here Thursday.

In a late match yesterday, India`s Sania Mirza and her Zimbabwean partner Cara Black hardly broke sweat while defeating former singles champion Martin Hingis and Russian Vera Zvonareva in straight sets 6-2 6-4. Bopanna-Qureshi today were in complete control of the proceedings even though the Russian-Czech combination did stretch them to successive tie-breaks in the first two sets. However the experienced duo prevailed in little over two hours as they clinched the issue on big points during both the tie-breaks after both the pairs held on to their serves. Bopanna`s booming serves came in handy during both the tie-breaks while they got the much needed service break in the third set to close down on the match. The Indo-Pak Express were brilliant with their first serve as they won a whopping 87 percent points. The duo also served up as many as eight aces, most of which were fired by Bopanna. The eighth seeded pair will now meet Vasek Pospisil of Canada and Jack Sock of the United States in their second round match.