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Collin Matiza Sports Editor
CARA Black and Sania Mirza are on a roll at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne. Veteran Zimbabwean women’s tennis player Black (33) and her Indian partner Mirza stormed into the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles competition at the first Grand Slam of the year after defeating Canadian teen star Euginie Bouchard and Vera Dushevina of Russia in the third round yesterday.

According to reports from Melbourne, it took sixth seeds Black and Mirza just over an hour to dismantle Bouchard and Dushevina 6-3, 6-4 to book their place in the last eight.

Bouchard and Dushevina were unseeded.
In fact, it took Black and Mirza exactly one hour 12 minutes to stop Bouchard and Dushevina in yesterday’s match as each set lasted 36 minutes with the Zimbabwean-Indo combination committing less unforced errors (21) as compared to their opponents’ (26).

Black and Mirza also fired 23 winners while Bouchard and Dushevina forced in 16 of them.
It was more of a clinical job for Black and Mirza who now have a mountain to climb in the quarter-finals where they will face the top-seeded Italian pair of Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci who are the defending champions in Melbourne.

Errani and Vinci were also in an uncompromising mood yesterday, defeating unseeded Aussies Monique Adamczak and Olivia Rogowska in straight sets 6-2, 6-2 in just over an hour in their third round match.

The Italians are currently ranked as the top women’s doubles team in the world after having won 19 doubles titles, including the 2012 French Open, the 2012 US Open and 2013 Australian Open.

At last year’s Australian Open, top seeds Errani and Vinci won the title, defeating wildcards Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacqua in the final, 6–2, 3–6, 6–2.

And they are gunning for their second straight title in Melbourne this week but they first have to get rid of Zimbabwe’s Black and her Indian partner Mirza in the quarter-finals if they are entertaining any thoughts of retaining their crown.

Errani and Vinci will also be out to gain some measure of revenge over Black and Mirza who upset them in the semi-finals of the China Open in Beijing towards the end of last season.

Black and Mirza, who combined forces late last year, are, meanwhile, slowly proving to be a formidable force in the women’s doubles as they have already collected a number of titles on the road during their short but promising partnership on the WTA Tour.

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, Japan, Black and Mirza defeated the top seeded team of Hsieh Su-wei of Taipei and and China’s Peng Shuai in the semi-finals before taking out Taipei’s Chan Hao-ching and American Liezel Huber  4-6, 6-0, 11-9 in the final. 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 in Beijing, where en-route to the final, they once again took out the top seeds of world number one team Errani and Vinci in the semi-finals, before defeating Dushevina and Spain’s Arantxa Parra Santonja  6-2, 6-2 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 worlds top 20, finishing the year ranked number 14 in the world.

The winners of the Black/Mirza and Errani/Vinci match will meet either the fourth-seeded pair of Czech Republic’s Kveta Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia or Australia’s Jarmila Gajdosova and her Croatian partner Ajla Tomljanovic in the semi-finals.
Gajdovova and Tomljanovic are unseeded.

Meanwhile, Mirza is also through to the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles competition at this year’s Australian Open.
Mirza and her Romanian partner Horia Tecau pulled through to the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles after stopping Australia’s Anastasia Rodionova and Briton Colin Fleming in straight sets 6-2, 6-2 in the second round late yesterday.

Mirza and Tecau are seeded sixth while Rodionova and Fleming were unseeded in the mixed doubles.