London, July 6: The Indo-Romanian tennis duo of Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea earned a hard fought victory against the Polish-Belarusian pair of Lukasz Kubot and Max Mirnyi 7-6(4), 6-7(5), 7-6(5), 7-6 (8) to enter the quarter-finals of the men's doubles event of the Wimbledon Championships here on Monday.

The ninth seeded pair got the better of their opponents after an epic battle that stretched for three hours and 20 minutes.

The match was evenly contested all the way through, as indicated by the scoreline, with each of the four sets contested stretching to tiebreakers as both the teams found it difficult to break its opponents serves and impose itself on their opponents.

The two teams matched each other shot to shot and match statistics were almost identical.

But Bopanna-Mergea edged out their opponents, though marginally, in the unforced errors and total points to claim the contest.

The Indo-Romanian pair forced their opponents to 18 unforced errors, three more than them, and won 169 points compared to 166 by the Polish-Belarusian duo.

But the winning duo hit 22 aces and 35 winners, way more than the vanquished team's 9 and 20, respectively, which settled the fate of the keen contest.

In the quarters, Bopanna-Mergea will face the winner of the match between top seeded American brothers duo of Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan and Croatian-New Zealand pair of Mate Pavic and Michael Venus.

The Indo-Romanian pair earned a similar bruising victory against the Polish-Belarusian pair of Lukasz Kubot and Max Mirnyi 7-5, 7-6 (5), 7-6(5) to enter the third round on Friday.

IANS