Leaving behind her unceremonious exit from the singles, Indian tennis sensation Sania Mirza and her top ranked Spanish partner Virgina Ruano Pascaul romped into the semifinals along with the Uberoi sisters in the USD 170,000 WTA Sunfeast Open tennis tournament in Kolkata on Thursday.
The fourth seeded Indo-Spanish pair made shortwork of Sunitha Rao (USA) and Villmarie Castellvi (Puerto Rico), beating them 6-1, 6-3 much to the joy of the handful of crowd at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.
Despite losing their service in the opening game, the 149th ranked pair maintained their cool and broke the rivals in the second, fourth and sixth game to finish off the first set in no time.
In the second set, the winners surged ahead to a 4-1 lead before Sania lost her serve, but came back with a vengeance to break the opponents in the very next game and finally grab the set 6-3.
Sania-Pascaul, who are to face top seeded Russian pair Anastasia Myskina and Elena Likhovtseva now, said they would bank on their "good combination" on the court.
The top seeded duo recorded a straight 6-4, 7-5 win over unseeded Chin Wei Chan and Su Wei Hsieh of Taipei on their way to the pre-summit round.
Meanwhile, Shikha and Neha Uberoi staged a brilliant comeback to storm into the doubles semifinals, getting past Chia Jung Chuang (Taipei) and Rika Fujiwara (Japan) in straight sets.
The Uberoi siblings, ranked 682, toppled their much higher ranked (158) rivals 6-4, 6-2 to register their first entry into the last four stage of a WTA Tour event.
