Indians at Wimbledon: Paes-Stepanek survive scare, Sania-Cara ousted

Leander Paes and Radek Stepanek survived a first round scare, but Sania Mirza and Cara Black were dumped from the women's doubles at Wimbledon on Sunday.

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The fifth seeded Indo-Czeck pair of Paes and Stepanek had to battle for three hours to douse the challenge of Santiago Gonzalez and Scott Lipsky, winning 3-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 11-9, in the rain-hit marathon opening round of the grass court Grand Slam.

Paes, who missed the French Open due to turbulence in his personal life, and Stepanek could convert only four of the 17 break chances in the contest even as they dropped serve twice.

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Meanwhile, fourth seeds Sania and her Zimbabwean partner Cara suffered a shock 6-2, 6-7(7), 4-6 defeat at the hands of the unseeded Russian-Czech pair of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Lucie Safarova.

Ironically, Sania-Cara won four more points against 111 of their opponents, and converted more break chances (6) than Anastasia and Lucie (5), but ended up on the wrong side of the result.

This is Sania's worst performance in Grand Slams this season; she entered the quarter-finals at the Australian and French Open.

Her challenge, though, is still alive in the mixed doubles with Romanian partner Horia Tecau. They are seeded sixth and open their campaign against Mate Pavic of Croatia and Bojana Jovanovski of Serbia.