London: Tennis star Sania Mirza and her women's doubles partner Switzerland's Martina Hingis today suffered a shock defeat in the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles Wimbledon tennis tournament.
The top seeded Indo-Swiss pair was knocked out by fifth seeds Hungary's Timea Babos and Kazakhstan's Yaroslava Shvedova 2-6, 4-6 in just 68 minutes.
Sania and Martina have won three doubles Grand Slams together, the latest being the 2016 Australian Open. They had also won the Wimbledon 2015 and US Open.
The Hungarian-Kazakhstani pair got off to a positive start, winning 13 of the 17 first serve points and winning two out of two break points to put the top seeds on the back foot.
Also, two doubles faults served by the Indo-Swiss pair in the opening set proved costly as the duo went down 2-6 to hand Timea-Yaroslava the advantage right at the start.
In the second set, Sania-Martina began the game well and aggressively. But powerful backhand and collective play by the fifth seeds saw them gather another 13 vital first serve points out of 27.
The second set was going in a see-saw manner but once Timea-Yaroslava won two break points there was no way back for the Indo-Swiss pair.
Despite breaking their opponents once in the set, Sania-Martina failed to hold on eventually missing a cut to yet another semi-finals as they lost the second set 4-6 to go crashing out of the tournament.
The fifth seeded Hungarian and Kazakhstani pair will next face tenth seeded United States’ pairing of Raquel Atawo and Abigail Spears in the semi-finals.
