Rohan Bopanna exits mixed doubles, Indian challenge at Australian Open ends

India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Chinese partner Yingying Duan crashed out of the Australian Open mixed doubles event after a 6-4, 6-4 loss to Britain’s Jamie Murray and USA’s Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

The result formally brings the Indian challenge at the first Grand Slam of the year to an end. Sumit Nagal had exited the men’s singles while Rohan Bopanna, Divij Sharan crashed out of the men’s doubles, all in their respective opening rounds.

In women’s doubles, too, Ankita Raina had failed to get past the first hurdle at her debut Grand Slam.

Up against the highly-rated English-American duo, who won the 2018 and 2019 US Open mixed doubles titles together, Bopanna and Duan started well.

In the first set, the two teams traded blows for the first eight games and held serves. However, with the score at 4-4 and Bopanna serving, the match turned.

Murray and Sands upped their game and broke the Indo-Chinese duo to take a 5-4 lead and then held their own serve to close out the first set 6-4.

With the momentum firmly in their favour, Murray and Sands proceeded to break Bopanna and Duan again in the first and third games of the second set to go 3-0 up.

However, just as it seemed that the match was headed for a quick conclusion, Bopanna sent some powerful returns in the fourth game to earn his team their first break of the match.

The game seemed to infuse much more confidence in Rohan Bopanna and Yingying Duan as they put up a much stronger fight in the remaining games.

However, it was a little too late as the experienced British-American pairing saw off the challenge and won the second set by a 6-4 margin as well.