Bhupathi-Knowles in Australian Open semis

On a sweet-sour day for India, Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles cruised into the semi-finals of the men's doubles but the top-seeded mixed doubles pair of Leander Paes and Cara Black were shocked in the second round of the Australian Open today.

The third-seeded Indo-Bahamian duo of Bhupathi and Knowles overcame a second set deficit to beat the Spanish pair of Feliciano Lopez and Fernando Verdasco 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 in one hour and 28 minutes.

The quarter-final clash saw Bhupathi and Knowles break the Spanish pair thrice while dropping their own serve twice. The winners played a controlled game, committing just four unforced errors to 11 of their opponents. They next play Lukasz Kubot of Poland and Oliver Marach of Austria.

However, Paes and Black, the reigning US Open champions, were outplayed 1-6, 5-7 by the unseeded Swiss-South African combine in just 64 minutes. The winners broke Paes and Black twice each in both the sets while the Indo-Zimbabwean pair could break their rivals only once in the second set.

Among the juniors, top seed Yuki Bhambri continued his impressive showing as he reached the pre-quarter-finals of the singles and quarter-finals of the doubles with Chinese Taipei's Liang-Chi Huang.

In the singles second round, Yuki beat local Stephen Hoh 7-6 (1), 6-0 while in the doubles he and Liang, top-seeded pair, beat Italian Marco Bortolotti and Vladzimir Kruk of Belarus 6-3, 6-4.

However, it was curtains for Kaza Vinayak Sharma, who lost his singles second round match 1-6, 1-6 to Justin Eleveld of The Netherlands.

In girls' doubles, Kyra Shroff and her Canadian partner Eugenie Bouchard lost 4-6, 1-6 to the sixth seeded pair of American Christina McHale and Ajla Tomljanovic of Croatia in the second round.