Sania, Barbora in blazing form

Melbourne: Sania Mirza and her Czech partner Barbora Strycova sailed into the third round of the women doubles event here on Friday. The fourth seeds eased past the Australian-Chinese pair of Samantha Stosur and Shuai Zhang 6-1, 6-4 in one hour 21 minutes in a second round duel.

The Indo-Czech combination, who finished runners-up at last week's Apia International in Sydney, will next play Japanese pair of Eri Hozumi and Miyu Kato. They came up with a dominant display from the word go and broke their opponents twice to race to a 4-0 lead in the first set.

Stosur and Zhang managed to break Sania's serve once to reduce the margin to 1-4 but the Indian-Czech pair broke back and went on to pocket the first set from their third set point.

In the second set, Sania once again conceded her serve in the second game to trail 0-3. But Sania and Strycova got their acts together in time and won three straight games to level the scores at 3-3. They then broke their opponents with a forehand volley to take a 5-4 lead and serve for the match.

But Sania and Strycova were made to work hard by Stosur and Zhang as the Indo-Czech duo had to save five break points and needed four match points to win the final game that lasted over 13 minutes.