Paes-Bhupathi score second victory

India's Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi scored their second straight victory in the World doubles tennis championship, whipping Donald Johnson of the United States and Piet Norval of South Africa 6-4, 6-4 in the concluding match of the evening on Thursday.

Indeed, it was a classic performance by the former world No.1 team as they won in a little under 70 minutes and virtually assured themselves a place in the semi-finals.

Johnson and Norval, who caused the first upset of the championship on Wednesday when they defeated fourth seeds Alex O'Brien and Jared Palmer, could do little to stop the marauding Indians.

With a vociferous crowd behind them, Paes and Bhupathi dominated the match from the start. Though Johnson and Norval did extremely well to get an amazing 97 per cent of their first serves in in the first set, it was the Indians' ability to come good on the big points which saw them take the match.

After gauging their opponents in the early stages of the match, they broke in the fifth game to go ahead 3-2 and then never looked back. Within 35 minutes the first set was over, with Bhupathi serving out the set at 15.

In the second set, the Indians broke as early as the third game after Johnson and Norval saved one break point. That sufficed for them to take the set and match.

"It was our best match in some time," said Paes after the match. "I'm really happy with our performance," he added while thanking the crowd for their support.

Paes said it was the encouragement that both gave each other which was responsible for the fluent victory.

Bhupathi was optimistic of making it to the semi-finals now that they have cleared the first two hurdles. "I think we are through," he said.

Earlier report