Paes wins, rain plays spoilsport in Sania's match

Melbourne, Jan 18 (UNI) India's victory run continued as Leander Paes with his Hungarian partner Agnes Szavay came from behind to overpower Czech duo of David Skoch and Renata Voracova 2-6, 6-2, 10-6 move into the second round of the mixed doubles of the Australian Open here today.

The Indo-Hungarian pair won the enthraling deul, which lasted for 1 hour and six minutes. A high percentage of first serve win (74) coupled with a better break point conversion rate helped their cause.

The Indo-Hungarian duo will now take on the winner of the match between Australian pair of Jarmila Gajdosova and Samuel Groth and Chia-Jung Chuang of Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) and Jonathan Erlich of Israel.

In women's doubles match between Sania Mirza and her Australian partner Alicia Molik's match was interrupted by rain. They were leading 6-3, 5-7, 1-1 (40-15) against the Russians duo of Nadia Petrova and Elena Vesnina.

Tomorrow Sania will have to play in the doubles to complete this match and then she will take on eight seed Venus Williams in the third round singles tie.

In the men's doubles the fifth seeded pair of Paes and Paul Hanley of Australia will take on Indo-American duo of Rohan Bopanna and Rajeev Ram.

Mahesh Bhupathi,pairing with Bahamas' Mark Knowles will face Switzerland's Yves Allegro and Belgian Kristof Vliegen in their second round encounter.

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