Sania stays alive in doubles

Sania Mirza kept her doubles campaign afloat, winning both her women's and mixed doubles matches at the Australian Open on Sunday.

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In women's doubles, Sania and her Australian partner Alicia Molik, seeded sixth, completed their rain-affected second round match beating Russians Nadia Petrova and Elena Vesnina 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 to advance to the third round.

Sania-Molik will now take on 12th seeds Victoria Azarenka of Belarus and Israeli Shahar Peer, who beat the Swiss pair of Emmanuelle Gagliardi and Patty Schnyder 6-3, 6-3.

After their successful doubles outing, the Indo-Australian pair was seen fighting each other in mixed doubles.

Sania partnered Mahesh Bhupathi for the opening round of the event and the Indian pair hardly broke a sweat as they ousted local favourites Molik and Nathan Healy 6-1, 6-4.

Sania and Bhupathi now have a tough match on hand as they will be up against second seeds Lisa Raymond and Simon Aspelin in the pre-quarterfinals.

The Indians had a fine day in the junior competitions as well.

Eighth seed Yuki Bhambri defeated Italian Giorgio Portaluri 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 in first round of boys' singles to set up a clash with Slovakian Zalan Klempa in the second round.

In another boys' singles encounter, Karunuday Singh rallied to beat Italian Daniele Piludu 4-6, 6-0, 6-3.

The unseeded Singh will face 10th seed Tsung-Hua Yang in the second round.

However, things didn't go as well for the girls with Janaki Gunuganti losing to fifth seed Serb Bojana Jovanovski 1-6, 3-6.