Indian Wells, California: India's Leander Paes and his Czech partner Radek Stepanek were knocked out by Marc Lopez and Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals of the BNP Paribas Open on Wednesday.
Sania Mirza brought in some good news for India though, as she and her Russian partner Elena Vesnina thrashed Argentina's Gisela Dulko and Paola Suarez to advance to the semi-finals.
Having defeated Juan Monaco and Kei Nishikori in the previous round, the seventh-seeded Paes and Stepanek lost out to the Spanish duo 6-3, 7-6(5) at Indian Wells.
The unseeded Spanish pair took an hour and 43 minutes to knock out the Australian Open men's doubles winners.
The Indo-Czech pair were poor on serve as they won just six points from their second serve and gave away 10 break points to the unseeded duo.
India's Rohan Bopanna and Mahesh Bhupathi were knocked out of the tournament in the first round.
Meanwhile, Sania and Vesnina took just over an hour to dispose of the Argentine wildcard entrants 6-2, 6-3.
The Indo-Russian pair showed great form and broke their opponents five times to pocket the match. The No.2 seeds had a poor percentage of first serve - 52 percent - but amazingly won 19 out of 25 points on it.
Sania and Vesnina also brushed off five of the six break points they faced and converted five of the nine break opportunities to their advantage.
They will square off against the third-seeded Czechs Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in the next round. The Czechs eased past the fifth-seeded Italian duo of Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci in straight sets.
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