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Collin Matiza Sports Editor
VETERAN Zimbabwean female tennis player Cara Black and her Indian partner Sania Mirza will meet Monica Niculescu of Romania and Czech Republic’s Klara Zakopalova in the second round of the Australian Open women’s doubles competition this weekend. Black (33) and Mirza are seeded sixth at the first Grand Slam of the year and they booked their place in the second round after they made light work of the Aussie pair of Tammi Patterson and Arina Rodionova in the opening round in Melbourne on Thursday.

Black and Mirza had little trouble in disposing of the unseeded local team of Patterson and Rodionova 6-1, 6-4 in an hour and seven minutes to pull through to the second round where they will face Niculescu and Zakopalova who beat Romanians Irina-Camelia Begu and Sorana Cirstea 6-3, 6-2 in the other first round match on Thursday.
Both teams were unseeded.

Black and Mirza must be fancying their chances of reaching the third round of the Australian Open when they face Niculescu and Zakopalova in round two this weekend as they gun for their first Grand Slam title together this year.

The sixth seeds, who won two doubles titles together towards the end of last season, are out to redeem themselves at the Australian Open after  they began their 2014 campaign with a shock first round defeat against wildcard pair of Jarmila Gajdosova and Ajlaat Tomljanovic at the Sydney International a couple of weeks ago.

At the Sydney International, the third-seeded Zimbabwean-Indo pair suffered a tame 3-6, 2-6 defeat in under an hour contest against the Australian-Croatian combination.

Black and Mirza, who ended the 2013 season by winning back-to-back titles in Japan and China, could convert just one of the six break chances they got while they dropped their service games twice in each set.

And after losing in the opening round in Sydney, Black and Mirza quickly got their act together in Melbourne on Thursday where they avoided another first-round exit by defeating Patterson and Rodionova in round one of the Australian Open.

Black began working with Mirza in September last year, with whom she ended up winning back-to-back WTA Premier 5 tournaments in the far east.

In Tokyo, Black and Mirza defeated the top seeded team of Hsieh Su-wei and Peng Shuai in the semi-finals before taking out Chan Hao-ching and Liezel Huber. It was Black’s first Premier 5 title since 2009, and her second of the season.

This was immediately followed by a win at the China Open, where en-route to the final, they once again took out the top seeds of world number one team Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci in the semi-finals, before defeating Vera Dushevina and Arantxa Parra Santonja in the final.

It was the first time since 2010 that Black had won back-to-back doubles titles, and it took her back up into the world’s top 20, finishing the year ranked number 14 in the world.

Black is already a winner of the women’s doubles crown at the Australian Open after she partnered American Liezel Huber to the title in 2007 and triumphing at Wimbledon.

Apart from playing with Mirza in the women’s doubles at this year’s Australian Open, Black is also partnering Briton Jamie Murray in the mixed doubles.

Black and Murray are unseeded in the mixed doubles and they are scheduled to meet the fifth-seeded pair of Anna Medina Garrigues of Spain and Brazil’s Bruno Soares in the first round. This year, Black is also gunning for her second mixed doubles title at the Australian Open after she picked up her first crown there with India’s Leander Paes in 2010.

The victory marked Black’s first mixed doubles victory at the Australian Open. The victory also completed a career Grand Slam in mixed doubles.

Black has won a total of 10 Grand Slam titles in women’s doubles and mixed doubles combined. By winning the mixed doubles title at the 2010 Australian Open, Black became the third woman in the open era to complete a career Grand Slam in mixed doubles (after Martina Navratilova and Daniela Hantuchová).