Bopanna moves one step closer to Australian Open

Rohan Bopanna moved one step closer towards qualifying for the Australian Open by advancing to the final of the Asian Tennis Championships being held at Tashkent.

Bopanna outclassed fourth seeded Yen-Hsun Lu of Taipei 6-0, 6-7, 6-1 in the semi-final, and will meet third seed Goichi Motomura of Japan in the final on Sunday.

The winner of this event is awarded a wild card into the Australian Open main draw. This is the same event, which catapulted Paradorn Srichapan of Thailand, who won the event last year, into the big league.

With the semifinal win, Bopanna has made it a highly successful week at Tashkent. His 6-4, 6-3 quarterfinal upset of 180th ranked Vadim Kutsenko of Uzbekistan is his first win against a player ranked in the top-200.

Bopanna had earlier defeated another Uzbek Dimitri Tomashevic(495) 6-4, 7-6 in the pre-quarter finals and Dovran Chagylov of Turkmenistan 6-0, 6-1 in the first round.

Among the other Indian players in the fray, Mustafa Ghouse lost in the first round to Uzbekistan's Sarvar Ikramov 3-6, 3-6 in the men's section while 15-year old Sania Mirza lost to the third seeded Su-Wei Hsieh of Chinese Taipei 4-6, 4-6 in the second round after beating Akgul Amanmuradova of Uzbekistan 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the first round.