Sania advances to quarters in doubles, mixed doubles

Sania Mirza had a productive day at the Australian Open as she reached the quarter-finals of both the women's doubles and the mixed doubles events with Elena Vesnina and Mahesh Bhupathi respectively on Monday.

Sania and Bhupathi, the 2009 mixed doubles champions, came from behind to beat Czech Iveta Benesova and Austria's Jurgen Melzer 3-6, 6-4, 12-10 in the second-round match.

The sixth-seeded Indian team took one hour and 11 minutes to dispatch their fighting opponents. They will next take on America's Liezel Huber and British Colin Fleming.

The Indian pair is heading towards a potential title clash with fourth seeds Rohan Bopanna and American Lisa Raymond, who got the better of the Australian pair of Casey Dellacqua and

Matthew Ebden 6-4, 6-2  in their second round match.

Bopanna and Raymond await the winner of other second round clash between the pairs of Su-Wei Hsieh/Marcin Matkowski and Vesnina/Leander Paes.

Earlier, Sania and her Russian partner Vesnina downed 12th seeds Jarmila Gajdosova of Australia and Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the USA 7-5, 6-3 to make the women's doubles quarter-finals.

They now have a tough next round as they face the second seeded American pair of Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond.

Meanwhile, in the junior competition, India tasted its first victory when Rutuja Bhosale and Indonesia's Aldila Sutjiadi rallied to beat India's Ratnika Batra and Australia's Georgiana Ruhrig 1-6, 6-4, 10-5 to advance to second round in the girls' doubles event.