{"id":4353,"date":"2020-01-17T08:23:46","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T08:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=4353"},"modified":"2020-01-17T08:23:46","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T08:23:46","slug":"sania-storms-into-hobart-international-womens-doubles-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=4353","title":{"rendered":"Sania storms into Hobart International women&#8217;s doubles final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Hobart, <\/strong>Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza cruised into the women&#8217;s doubles final of the Hobart International with her Ukrainian partner Nadiia Kichenok here on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Sania and Kichenok sailed past the Slovenian-Czech pair of Tamara Zidansek and Marie Bouzkova 7-6 (3) 6-2 in the semifinal contest that lasted one hour and 24 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The fifth-seeded Indo-Ukrainian combination will lock horns with second seeds Shuai Peng and Shuai Zhang of China. The Chinese pair got a walkover after Belgium&#8217;s Kirsten Flipkens and Alison Van Uytvanck conceded the other semifinal match because of injury.<\/p>\n<p>While Sania and Kichenok had to fight hard in the opening set, the second set was a cakewalk for the combination.<\/p>\n<p>The first set was a tough contest between the two pairs, bringing the tie-breaker into the equation after it was level at 6-6.<\/p>\n<p>In the tie-breaker, Sania and Kichenok upped their game by a few notches to outsmart their opponents and take the lead.<\/p>\n<p>The second set was a no-contest as Saina and Kichenok broke their opponents thrice &#8212; in the second, sixth and eighth game &#8212; to easily pocket the set and a place in the summit clash.<\/p>\n<p>Saina and Kichenok got 11 break chances out of which they converted four, while their opponents utilized two out of the five break chances that came their way.<\/p>\n<p>The 33-year-old Sania is returning to the WTA circuit after two years. During her time away from the game, she battled injury breakdowns before taking a formal break in April 2018 to give birth to her son Izhaan. She is married to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.<\/p>\n<p>Before the ongoing event, Sania last played at China Open in October 2017.<\/p>\n<p>A trailblazer in Indian tennis, Sania is a former world No.1 in doubles and has six Grand Slam titles to her credit.<\/p>\n<p>She retired from the singles competition in 2013 after becoming the most successful Indian woman tennis player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hobart, Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza cruised into the women&#8217;s doubles final of the Hobart International with her Ukrainian partner Nadiia Kichenok here on Friday. Sania and Kichenok sailed past the Slovenian-Czech pair of Tamara Zidansek and Marie Bouzkova 7-6 (3) 6-2 in the semifinal contest that lasted one hour and 24 minutes. The fifth-seeded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4355,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions\/4355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}