Second seeds Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles squandered chances aplenty and went down 6-7 (4), 2-6 to Rik De Voest and Dmitry Tursonov in the quarter-finals of the US $2,233,500 Dubai Tennis championships.
With Mahesh's defeat, the Indian challenge ended at the event, as Leander Paes and Prakash Amritraj also exited with their respective partners.
The Indo-Bahamian partner squandered as many as eight break-points in a fiercely fought first set, which was eventually decided by a tie-breaker. The unseeded South African-Russian pair converted two of the three chances in the first set.
Bhupathi and Knwoles saved three break-points in the second set but were broken twice before going down in an hour and 17 minutes.
They will get 90 ranking points each and split US $14,050 prize-money between them.
Third seeds Paes and Lukas Dlouhy were sent packing in the first round, losing 4-6, 6-2, 8-10 to the unseeded pair of Simone Bolelli and Ivo Karlovic.
The wild card pair of Amritraj and Aisam-ul Haq Qureshi of Pakistan also failed to make it to the second round, beaten by the Czech-Swede pair of Martin Damm and Robert Lindstedt 6-7 (4), 5-7.