Sania-Cara pair reaches final of Indian Wells WTA event

Sania Mirza and Cara Black are in line to win their first title of season as they defeated Lucie Hradecka and Jie Zheng to reach the final of the BNP Paribas Open, a Premier WTA tournament, here.

The fifth seeded Indo-Zimbabwean pair defeated eighth seeded Czech-Chinese team 6-4 3-6 10-7 in an hour and 37 minutes in the semi-final of the USD 5,946,740 hard court event.

It will be first final of the 2014 season for Sania and Cara, who had won two back-to-back titles to end the previous season.

Before this event, in four tournaments this season, they twice suffered a first round exit and reached quarterfinals of the other two, including Australian Open.

There was not much difference between the two sides as they fared almost same in all departments of the game. Sania and Cara (71) won only five more points than their rivals.

They now await winners of the other semifinal between Su-Wei Hsieh/Shuai Peng and Svetlana Kuznetsova/Samantha Stosur.