Singapore:
Sania Mirza and Cara Black showed nerves of steel as they saved three match points in the Super Tie Break against Kveta Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik to cruise into the summit clash of the WTA year-end finals, here on Saturday.
The third-seeded Indo-Zimbabwean pair was trailing 6-9 but showed amazing resilience to reel off five straight points in a tense Super tie breaker to clinch the issue 4-6 7-5 11-9 against the Czech-Slovenian combo.
Playing the year-end finals for the first time but combining for the last time together, Sania and Cara came back from a set down to win the thrilling semifinal in two hours and one minute.
They will now clash with Chinese Taipei’s Su-Wei Hsieh and China’s Shuai Peng, who scored an easy 6-1 6-4 win over Alla Kudayavtseva and Anastasia Rodionova in the other semifinal.
Sania and Cara have lost thrice this season to Hsieh and Peng but in their last meeting at Montreal in August they emerged winners.
Sania and Cara made a great start by breaking Katarina early to take a 2-0 lead but let go the advantage when the Zimbabwean dropped her serve in the third. Then Sania also lost her serve and Kveta and Katarina raced away with the first set.
The third seeds grabbed the initiative in the second set when they got a break in the fourth game and had the opportunity to the close the set in the ninth game but could not do it.
Kveta and Katarina were serving to stay in the set in the 12th game but Sania and Cara stretched the match to tie-break by breaking their opponents.
