Sania storms into Bangalore Open quarters

The second seeded Sania's 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 victory over a cool and gritty Tatiana Poutchek of Belarus ensured her a berth in quarter-finals.

In an interesting late night match, Sania Mirza staged a brilliant rally and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to keep the Indian hopes alive in the Sony Ericsson International WTA tournament here.

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The second seeded Sania's 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 victory over a cool and gritty Tatiana Poutchek of Belarus ensured her a berth in Saturday's quarter-finals in which she takes on unseeded Yaroslava Shvedova of Russia.

When the much-awaited match began couple of minutes past nine Poutchek raced to an unexpected 5-0 lead with breaks in second and fourth games, before the 46th ranked Sania could wake up. All that the fancied Indian did then was to break Pouchek's serve in the seventh but it proved just not enough as the latter seized the initiative.