Paes, Bhupathi, Bopanna advance with contrasting victories

Indian players enjoyed a fine outing at the Wimbledon with the seasoned trio of Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna winning their respective men's doubles matches to progress into the third round in London.

Fourth seeds Paes and his Czech partner Radek Stepanek sailed past Britain's Jamie Delgado and Australia's Matthew Ebden in straight sets 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 in an hour and 55 minutes.

Eight seeded Indo-Austrian pair of Bhupathi and Julian Knowle came from a set down to get the better off Nicholas Monroe of the US and German Simon Stadler 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 in a tough battle that lasted for two hours and 22 minutes.

They will now take on the Canadian pair of Jesse Levine and Vasek Pospisil.

Bopanna and his French-partner Edouard Roger-Vasselin had to fight hard before prevailing over Daniel Brands and Lukas Rosol in a gruelling five setter of three-hour duration.

Bopanna and Roger-Vasselin pipped the German-Czech combination by 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (7-4), 6-7 (8-10), 6-4 in a second round encounter to set up a clash against the third seed pair of Austria's Alexander Peya and Bruno Soares from Brazil.

For Paes, unlike his first round encounter which was a keenly contested four setter, the second round battle was a virtual cakewalk.

In the first set, Paes-Stepanek got a break which helped them clinch the set 6-4 while in the second set the Indo-Czech pair did well enough to break their opponents' serve thrice despite their own serve broken on two occasions.

Again in the final set, the duo got an important service break as they hardly broke sweat before clinching the issue.

Photograph: Julian Finney/Getty Images