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Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Rohan Bopanna came back from verge of eviction to enter the semi-finals of the St. Petersburg ATP World Championships on Thursday.
The 'IndoPak Express' recovered from being a match-point down and rolled over the Serbian pair of Viktor Troicki and Janko Tipsarevic.
The Serbs, who had defeated Bopanna-Qureshi in the quarterfinals of the Kremlin Cup last week, bombarded huge baseline winners from the beginning and went on to take the first set 6-3. The South Asian pair failed to convert the four breakpoints they had won, while their opponents two of their three.
The start of the second set saw a spirited comeback from Bopanna-Qureshi, who implied aggressive tactics and broke Tipsarevics serve at 1-1 to take a 2-1 lead. Qureshi held his next service game and consolidated the lead to 3-1.
At 4-3 up, however, Qureshis serve was broken as Bopanna made two unforced errors and the Serbians hit sizzling return winners on two other points. With the momentum shifting their way, the Serbs put pressure on Bopanna-Qureshi by holding their own serve and went 5-4 up. Bopanna's strong serves put his team 40-15 up but a missed volley and a great passing shot brought them to a match-point down at 40-40. The lanky Indian missed his first serve but went on to hit an excellent second serve down the tee, which evaded Troicki and the IndoPak Express were back on level at five-all.
Under pressure from the fighting South Asians, Tipsarevic faltered in his service game but fought back to make it 6-5 for the Serbs. Equal to the task, Qureshi held his serve in the next game to make the score 6-6 and force the set into a tie-break.
The first point of the tie-break went in Bopanna-Qureshi's favour but being unable to retain the lead, they were soon serving at 2-1. The Serbs took the next two points to make it 2-3 and then took another point on Qureshi's for a 4-2 lead. The IndoPak Express took next five points in a row to win the second set tie break with at 7-6 (7/4).
Bopanna-Qureshi's onslaught continued in the super tie-break with a continuous run of points, leading them to 6-0, winning 11 points in a row. The US Open finalists went on to win the super tie break at 10-1 and won the match in one hour and 25 minutes with the help of six aces against three by their opponents. Their first-serve percentage was 73 per cent against 69 per cent by their opponents.
The second-seeded IndoPak Express face third seeds Filip Polasek and Igor Zelenay of Slovakia in the semi-finals.
