Indian tennis star Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis have started 2016 from where they left off last year, notching up their 25th straight victory to enter the final of the Brisbane International Tennis Tournament on Friday.
The top-seeded Indo-Swiss duo defeated the Slovak-Russian combination of Andreja Klepac and Alla Kudryavtseva 6-3, 7-5 to make the title clash, where they will face the winners of the other semifinal between the Spanish team of Anabel Medina Garrigues and Arantxa Parra Santonja and the German wildcard pairing of Angelique Kerber and Andrea Petkovic.
Mirza and Hingis, currently the world’s top-ranked team, breezed past their rivals in the opening set before facing slight resistance in the second.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve lost, but it’s never easy to start a new season, especially when you’re coming off such a great season. Everyone’s gunning for us - we’re the hunted,” Mirza said.
“We’re just taking it one match at a time, stay positive, and pick up from where we left off.”
Sania and Hingis won nine titles last season, inluding five consecutive starting from the US Open, and their unbeaten streak is the longest since Italians Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci’s 25 in a row in 2012. The Italians had also won five titles in a row, at Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, the French Open and ‘s-Hertogenbosch before their run came to an end at Wimbledon.
{{/usCountry}}Sania and Hingis won nine titles last season, inluding five consecutive starting from the US Open, and their unbeaten streak is the longest since Italians Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci’s 25 in a row in 2012. The Italians had also won five titles in a row, at Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, the French Open and ‘s-Hertogenbosch before their run came to an end at Wimbledon.
{{/usCountry}}“I think we’re off to a great start in the new season. We never really felt like we finished in 2015 - I played the Indian league and Sania played IPTL, so we still kept our routine,” Hingis said.
“We’re really happy to have the possibility to be in another final here, and win another title,” she added.
The last doubles team to win more than 25 matches in a row was Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva who notched up 28 victories in a row way back in 1994.