Sania Mirza in doubles final at Ostrava Open

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Ostrava (Czech Republic), Sep 25 (IANS) Sania Mirza and her Chinese partner Zhang Shuai stormed into the women's doubles final at the Ostrava Open WTA tennis championship, beating Japan's Eri Hozumi and Makoto Ninomiya in straight sets on Saturday.

Sania-Zhang, seeded second here, defeated the Japanese pair 6-2, 7-5 in an hour and 20 minutes and await the winner of the other semi-final between Pola'd's Magda Linette and Bernarda Pera of the USA, the top seeds, and the American-Kiwi team of Kaitlyn Christian and Erin Routliffe.

Sania and Zhang had reached the semi-finals by beating Anna Danilina of Kazakhstan and Lidziya Marozava of Belarus 6-3, 2-6 10-6.

In the semi-final clash, Sania and Zhang opened up a 4-0 lead and though they were broken in the fifth game, the Indo-Chinese pair maintained their serve after that as they won the set 6-2. The Indo-Chinese pair converted all three break points while saving two of the three on their serve. They managed to put in 72.7 percent of their serves while their rivals could only manage 58.3 percent.

The Japanese pair put up a better fight in the second set as they surged ahead by breaking the service of the Indo-Chinese pair in the fifth game.

However, Eri Hozumi and Makoto Ninomiya surrendered their lead in the 10th game. Sania Mirza and Zhang Shuai took off from there to wrap up the match in straight sets.

Sania will be playing her second final of the season. Earlier, she had lost in the title match at Cleveland Championships last month with American Christina Mchale of the USA.

Sania and Zhang converted two of the six break points they earned while their rivals could convert only one of the two they had. They put in 73.5 percent first serve and had an ace while their rivals served two double faults,

--IANS

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