Paes-Bhupathi crash out in opener

Shailesh Soni

The Indian doubles pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi crashed out of the Australian Open tennis championships on Thursday.

The former world No.1 pair, unseeded in the tournament, lost their first round match to the 10th seeded Australian pair of Joshua Eagle and Andrew Florent 6-7(5-7), 4-6.

Statistically, the match was evenly contested, but Eagle/Florent took the match, taking full advantage of the chances they got.

The match started off with Eagle/Florent serving. Games went with the serve till game 10. In game 11, the Indians had triple break-points and broke Eagle/Florent to go up 6-5. But the joy was shortlived as the Australians levelled scores in the very next game to make it 6-6.

In the tie-breaker, the Australians quickly raced to a 6-2 lead. The Indians did try to make a comeback and saved one set point before losing the first set at 6-7(5-7).

Statistically, in the first set, the Indians had a better first serve percentage, with less double faults and unforced errors, but lost the set on the total points won.

The second set was a see-saw affair. Eagle/Florent started by breaking the Indians in the very first game. But Paes/Bhupathi came back strongly and broke the Australians in the second and fourth games. They won four games in a row and suddenly were up 4-1.

Now it was the Australians' turn to reply and they did it in style. They took five games in a row to take the set and match.

Eagle/Florent held their serve in the sixth game and went on to break the Indians in the seventh and ninth games. The Indians saved one match point in the 10th game before losing the set 4-6.

With the loss, the Indian challenge in the doubles ended. Earlier, Nirupama Vaidyanathan and Renata Kolbovic lost to the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, 6-1, 6-3 in a first round match on Wednesday.

Now the Indian challenge is left to the mixed doubles, where Mahesh Bhupathi is playing with Ai Sugiyama of Japan and Leander Paes is playing with Lisa Raymond of the United States.

Bhupathi/Sugiyama will face the unseeded pair of David Rikl (CZE) and Karina Habsudova (SVK) in the first round match on Friday.

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Paes-Bhupathi vow to fight on