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Paes-Black cruise into final at Wimbledon

July 03, 2009 23:52 IST

Top seeds Leander Paes and Cara Black stormed into the final of Wimbledon's mixed doubles event with a straight-set victory over Stephen Huss and Virginia Ruano Pascual on Friday.

The Indo-Zimbabwe pair beat their 12th seeded opponents 6-4, 6-4 in a little over 70 minutes.

In the final, Paes and Black will meet the winner of the other semi-final between ninth seeds Mark Knowles (Bahamas)/Anna-Lena Groenefeld (Germany) and unseeded Jamie Murray (Great Britain)/Liezel Huber (USA).

Paes, who won the French Open men's doubles crown earlier this month, is in line for his 10th major. From Wimbledon, he already has two mixed doubles titles -- with Lisa Raymond in 1999 and Martina Navratilova in 2003 -- and the men's doubles in 1999 with Bhupathi.

Paes and Black, who won the US Open mixed doubles last year, were rusty at the start and broken in the second game by the Australian-Spanish pair, who went 3-0 up. However, they fought back with stunning ferocity and broke back in the fifth and seventh games to pocket the first set 6-4 in 35 minutes.

The second set went on serve till the fourth game. Paes and Black tightened their game to break in the fifth and pocket the set 6-4 in 36 minutes and wrap the match.