India's Leander Paes and Zimbabwe's Cara Black rallied strongly after losing the first set to enter the mixed doubles final at the Australian Open on Friday.
The top seeded duo beat Lisa Raymond of the United States and Wesley Moodie of South Africa 6-7 (6/8), 7-6 (7/5), 10-7 in a hard-fought affair. They trailed 2-4 in the second set but did extremely well to win it and take the match to the super tie-breaker.
They will meet Ekaterina Makarova and Jaroslav Levinsky, who beat Italy's Flavia Pennetta and Brazil's Marcelo Melo 6-0, 4-6, 10-8 in the other semi-final earlier.
Friday's victory earned Paes a chance to equal the record for most Grand Slam title wins by an Indian. He already has ten Grand Slam titles, including six from men's doubles.He won the mixed doubles at the Australian Open in 2003 with Czech-American legend Martina Navratilova and finished runner-up the following year.
Paes failed to make it through to the men's doubles final. He and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy, seeded third, went down 3-6, 4-6 to the unseeded Croat-Serb combination of Ivo Karlovic and Dusan Vemic in the quarter-finals.India's Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza were the last year's mixed doubles champions. However, Bhupathi had to pull off the event due to an injury.
