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Sania enters Madrid quarters, Bhupathi ousted
Madrid: Indian tennis star Sania Mirza, partnering Swiss Martina Hingis, entered the women’s doubles quarterfinals with a straight sets win, while compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi had to bite the dust at the Madrid Open with a first round loss in the men’s doubles here.
In the second round, top seeds Sania and Martina, who had got a first round bye, took just an hour to defeat Slovakian-Romanian combo of Janette Husarova and Raluca Olaru 6-2, 6-3 on the clay courts of the Caja Magica on Tuesday evening. They will take on circuit regulars and seventh seeds Bethanie Mattek-Sands (United States) and Lucie Safarova (Czech) in the last eight.
Service games were broken quite regularly in the match. The unseeded pair broke Sania and Martina twice during the contest but the top seeds reverted by breaking their opponents thrice more to gain the upper hand in the match. A couple of double faults at crucial junctures also did not help Janette and Raluca.
Sania and Martina won 59 points in total to that of the Slovak-Romanian combine’s 34.
However, Bhupathi’s luck ran out quite early as he lost the opener in straight sets. The South African-French pair of Kevin Anderson and Jeremy Chardy beat the Indo-Austrian wildcard combination of Bhupathi and Nick Kyrgios 7-5, 6-3.
Anderson and Chardy broke their opposing team once in each set to settle the matter with relative ease and advance into the second round.
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Sunil Gavaskar gives his opinion of GT allrounder Rahul Tewatia
The left-handed batsman from Haryana is garnering praise from all quarters for the way he’s finishing games regularly in the most exciting IPL season.
Gavaskar reckons Tewatia’s whirlwind knock in Sharjah (in IPL 2020) where he smashed West Indies pacer Sheldon Cottrell for five sixes in an over, gave him the confidence that he belongs to the big stage.
Speaking on Cricket Live on Star Sports, Gavaskar said, “That assault on Sheldon Cottrell in Sharjah gave him the belief to do the impossible and the confidence that he belongs here. We saw the impossible (he did with the bat) the other day as well. There’s no twitching or touching the pads (which shows a batter’s nervousness) when he bats in the death overs. He just waits for the ball to be delivered and plays his shots. He’s got all the shots in the book, but most importantly his temperament to stay cool in a crisis is brilliant.”
Gavaskar has also nicknamed the 28-year-old cricketer the ‘ice-man’ and lauded Tewatia’s ability to remain unruffled during the tense moments.