Paes-Bhupathi crash out
in round two

The Indian duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi crashed out of the Australian Open on Friday.

The pair, seeded third at the Open, lost in the second round to the French pair of Michael Llodra and Fabrice Santoro 2-6, 4-6.

Earlier on Thursday, they had defeated the unseeded team of Julian Knowle of Austria and Michael Kohlmann of Germany 6-2, 5-7, 7-5.

The match, which took 66 minutes, was fought very closely, but the French pair came out winners on account of better break-point conversions (2 of 2) as compared to the Indians' 0 of 4.

The Indians were totally off-colour in the match and had two double-faults and four unforced errors as compared to just one each by the French team. The French broke the Indians once in each set.

In the first set, the Indians wasted two break chances against Llodra's serve in the fifth game and Bhupathi lost his serve in the sixth game. The French team took the set at 6-3 in just 30 minutes.

In the second set, Paes's serve was broken in the seventh game. The Indians had a chance to come back in the next game, when they had two break-points against Santoro's serve. But they could not convert them and lost the match.

Last year, the Indians had crashed out of the event, losing to the Australian pair of Joshua Eagle and Andrew Florent 6-7(5), 4-6 in the first round.

Earlier reports:
Paes-Bhupathi in round two
Paes-Bhupathi seeded third for Australian Open