Bhupathi/Likhovtseva in semis

Mahesh Bhupathi and Elena Likhovtseva stormed into the semi-finals of the mixed doubles at Wimbledon after beating Bob Bryan and Lisa McShea 6-1, 4-6, 15-13 in a rain-interupted, marathon quarter-final, which began on Thursday and ended on Friday.

Bhupathi and Likhovtseva were leading 6-1, 4-6, 5-4 on Thursday when rain stopped play.

When the match resumed on Friday, Bryan easily held his serve to level scores at 5-5. Then games went with serve with none of the teams able to effect a break. In the 27th game, Bryan and McShea had two break-points on Likhovtseva's service, but the Indo-Russian pair saved them and went on to hold serve.

In the 28th game, Bhupathi and Likhovtseva got the all-important break on McShea's serve to take the set and match.

The set took 84 minutes.

They now will face the winner of the match between second seed Ellis Ferreira of South Africa/Ai Sugiyama of Japan and Mike Bryan of the United States/Liezel Huber of South Africa in the semi-finals.

On Thursday, the first set of the match was over in just 25 minutes, as Bhupathi and Likhovtseva broke thrice. They broke Bryan in the first and fifth games and McShea in the seventh game.

But Bryan and McShea came back strongly in the second set, with McShea almost single-handedly going on a tear, winning points off Bhupathi and forcing the break in the fifth game. They cruised to take the set at 6-4.

In the third set, Bhupathi and Likhovtseva went ahead with a break in the fourth game off McShea's serve. But Likhovtseva dropped her serve in the seventh game to lose the advantage, and the scores were leveled at 4-4. Bhupathi was in trouble in the ninth game, facing a break point, but the Indian fired an ace to hold his serve at 5-4. Rain then interupted play with Bob Bryan to serve in the 10th game.

In the Gentlemen's 35 RR doubles, Ramesh Krishnan and Paul Hand of Great Britain lost their third round-robin match against the top seeded British pair of Jeremy Bates and Nick Fulwood 4-6, 6-4, 4-6. Krishan and Hand had won the second match ater losing in the first.