Sania- Ivanovic in last 8

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March 28, 2006 11:12 IST

Sania Mirza and her Serbian partner Ana Ivanovic stormed into the quarter-finals of the Nasdaq-100 Open, outplaying the Czech-Italian pair of Kveta Peschke and Francesca Schiavone 6-1, 6-3 in the second round, in Miami on Monday.

They finished off the match in less then an hour and will now take on the winners of the other second round clash between the eighth seeded Japaneese-Slovakian pair of Shinobu Asagoe and Katarina Srebotnik and the wildcard Belgian pair of Kim Clijsters and Caroline Maes.

The Czech-Italian pair put up little resistence against Sania and Ivanovic.

The Indo-Serbian broke Peschke and Schiavone twice in the first set before wrapping it up in 28 minutes.

The next set followed almost the same pattern except for the fact that Peschke and Schiavone managed to break Sania and Ivanovic for the first and the last time in the match.

But the WTA Newcomer of the Year and her Serbian comrade-in-arms had established a firm grip over the match by then and they broke their rivals thrice before winding up the proceedings to march ahead.

Earlier, Sania was knocked out of the first round of the singles competition by a 16-year-old Georgian wildcard entrant Anna Tatishvili, who won a marathon match to end the Indian's singles campaign at the tournament.

The poor result added to her singles woes as she's struggling to regain form after finishing last year at a career high number 31 in the WTA rankings.

Her form this year, has seen her drop to the 41st position in the rankings.

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