India sneaked through the backdoor to the knockout stage after beating Uzbekistan 2-1 in their final engagement of the Fed Cup women's team tennis competition in Delhi on Friday.
Second seeded Indonesia did the Indians a huge favour by beating the third seeds South Korea 2-1 in the other match in pool B of the Asia-Oceania zone Group 1 tie at the R K Khanna stadium.
Indonesia and India finished first and second respectively with the former having won all their four ties while the hosts having three wins from four.
Indonesia take on Pool A runners-up New Zealand while India face the top seeds Thailand in the knockouts on Saturday. The winners of both the matches advance to the World Group playoff while the losers remain in Group 1.
For India, Sania Mirza and Manisha Malhotra scored a thrilling 7-6 (21/19) 6-1 win over Vlada Ekshibarova and Ivanna Isroilova in a rain interrupted doubles rubber.
Earlier, Sania had helped India level the scores 1-1 with her 6-4 6-2 victory over a half-fit Akgul Amanmuradova after Ankita Bhambri saw her dream run come to an end with a 4-6 4-6 loss to Ivanna Isroilova in the singles matches.
At the start of day's play, India and Korea were level in terms of ties and matches won but the latter had more number of sets to their credit. In the end, the former advanced by virtue of head to head result.
The Koreans, who had lost to India 1-2, threatened to spoil the Indians' party with Jin-Hee Kim defeating Sandy Gumulya 6-3 6-3 in the first singles.
But Wynne Prakusya worked hard to eek out a 5-7 7-6 (7/2) 6-4 win over Mi-Ra Jeon before joining hands with Angelique Widjaja for a nerve-wracking 6-3 7-5 doubles win over Yoon-Jeong Cho and Kyung-Mi Chang late in the night.
Incidentally, the Indonesians were pleasantly surprised as the same crowd that had rooted against them when they took on the Indians on Thursday was backing them to the hilt.
Singapore and Kazakhstan topped Group 2 to earn a promotion to Group 1.
