It was a mixed day for Indian players at Wimbledon on Wednesday. French Open champion Rohan Bopanna stayed in the fray for the mixed doubles title with Canadian partner Gabriela Dabrowski. Among the juniors, Zeel Desai moved to the second round in the girls doubles with Swiss teammate Lulu Sun.
Here’s a recap of the day’s results for Indian players
Bopanna advances, Sania Mirza falters
Bopanna and Dabrowski moved into the Wimbledon quarterfinals with a straight sets win over the unseeded Croatian pair of Nikola Mektic and Ana Konjuh. The tenth seeds won 7-6(5), 6-2 in 63 minutes.
The pair, which won the mixed doubles title at Roland Garros, made good on two of the four break point chances they had on Mektic and Konjuh’s serve and saved all four break points they faced on their serves. They finished the match with 28 points to their opponents’ 17.
The Indo-Canadian pair will face the defending champions Henri Kontinen and Heather Watson in the last-eight. The Finnish-British are unseeded in the draw, but notched an upset win over fourth seeds Ivan Dodig and Sania Mirza in their pre-quarter-final match on Wednesday.
Watson and Kontinen won 7-6(4), 6-4 in 88 minutes. They won a total of 71 points, eight more than Mirza and Dodig, and converted two of the four break point opportunities on their opponents’ serve.
Zeel Desai still in the fray
The eighteen-year-old Desai is the last Indian junior in contention, as Siddhant Banthia, Mahak Jain and Mihika Yadav all went down in their doubles matches. However, the Indian Junior No 1 had a mixed day herself, losing in the singles to the top seed.
She lost 6-4, 6-4 to Kayla Day in the pre-quarter-final of the junior girls singles. The 15th seed put up a tough fight, but the American came out to be the better player taking the win in straight sets.
But in her doubles match against the Argentine-Japanese team of Maria Lourdes Carle and Naho Sato, Desai and her Swiss partner Sun shrugged off their opening set loss to move into the second round, 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-3.
The all Indian pair of Jain and Yadav, who had teamed up for the Championships, couldn’t get past the the third seeds in the first round. The unseeded duo went down to the British-American team of Katie Swan and Day, 6-1, 6-1.
Earlier, Banthia, along with his Japanese partner James Kent Trotter, bowed out of the junior boys doubles first round. The second seeded Argentine-Taiwanese team of Axel Geller and Yu Hsiou Hsu defeated Banthia and Trotter 4-6, 6-3, 9-7.
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