Sania Mirza/Mara Santangelo crash out of doubles

Bangalore, Feb 17 (UNI) The Indo-Italian challenge ended in doubles too as second seeded pair of Mara Santangelo of Italy and Sania Mirza of India lost to fourth seed Su-Wei Hsieh of Taipei and Alla Kudryavtseva of Russia 6-4, 3-6, 10-5 in the doubles semi-final of the Sony Ericsson International WTA Tennis tournament played at the KSLTA stadium here today.

Earlier debutante Yaroslava Shvedova of Russia defeated Tzipora Obziler of Israel 7-5, 6-2 to lock horns with defending Champion Mara Santangelo of Italy who beat Olga Savchuk of Ukraine 6-1, 6-2 in the singles semi-finals.

The Indo-Italian pair of Sania and Mara rallied back well to level set scores, after going down in the first set, but lost the focus thereafter. Both Sania, suffering from a fever, and Mara tired after the semi-final win in the morning, fumbled at crucial moments in the super tie-breaker.

In the first set Sania and Mara went down after Su-Wei Hsieh and Alla took a clear upper hand right from the start taking advantage of Sania's poor finishing. Though Santengelo tried her best, Sania's erratic returns cost the pair the opening set.

However, they braced themselves up in the second set and succeeded in stretching the match to the tie-breaker. They broke their opponents in the second game to lead 2-0 and went on to a comfortable lead of 5-3 thereafter. Mara and Sania earned another service break to win the set and levelled the match scores.

However, in the super tie-break, played as per the new rules, Sania and Mara were never in hunt as they crumbled to a 1-5 deficit and lost thereafter, despite reducing the arrears to 4-6 at one stage.

UNI