Birmingham: Sania Mirza's impressive run at the Aegon Classic continued as the Indian ace sealed a semi-final berth by beating 16th seed Hungarian Melinda Czink in straight sets in Birmingham on Friday.
The unseeded Indian survived some anxious moments in the dying minutes of the match before pulling off a 6-1, 7-6 (4) in the quarter-finals of the $220,000 WTA event being played in the build up to the Wimbledon.
Sania will next face winner of the other quarter-final match between 13th seed Slovakian Magdalena Rybarikova and unseeded Polish Urszula Radwanska.
Sania went ahead by breaking Melinda at love in the fourth game. The Hungarian double faulted and the Indian pounced on the first chance and held next game to surge to a 4-1 lead.
Melinda struggled with her serve and a flurry of double faults again helped Sania's cause as the Indian capitalised on her rival's error to get one more break in the sixth game and served out the set in the game.
The double fault bug bit the Indian too in the second set as she committed two in the fourth game to hand a 3-1 lead to the Hungarian.
Sania though returned the compliment in the next game when she converted the second breakpoint and held her serve in the next to make it 3-3.
The Hyderabadi broke Melinda in the ninth game to create that little vital gap but squandered a match point in the next game to let Melinda draw parity.
Again she survived few anxious moments in the 12th game before stretching it to a tie-breaker, where she outplayed her rival to make the next round.
With this win Sania also equalled the win-loss record against Melinda 1-1 as she had lost her first match against the Hungarian when the two had clashed in Kolkata in 2005.
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