World number four Jelena Jankovic spent almost the whole of a two-hour, 14-minute match trailing before narrowly surviving against Sania Mirza in the second round of the Dubai Open. The Serbian beat the Indian 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 but there were many moments when it seemed that the unseeded Mirza, who led 3-1 in the final set and had three points for 5-3 and an opportunity to serve for the match, was going to win.
The 21-year-old Mumbai-based player from Hyderabad often swung her better-known opponent about the court with early, flat-hit drives, and also hit a high ratio of clean winners. But just when it seemed she had Jankovic on the back foot, errors crept into Mirza's game, the return of serve she sent long from a moderate second serve on the third break point being particularly wayward. But Mirza also provided many rousing moments with her forthright style, bringing plenty of noise from the large expatriate crowd and contributing a great deal to the entertainment.
Once Jankovic spoke to some of them as though she were trying to quieten them down. "They were making a sudden noise during the rallies, which was disturbing, and I asked them to wait until the end of the rallies to do it," she said. "But they didn't."
Jankovic paid tribute to the exciting ability of Mirza to attack but admitted, when questioned, that she had not been feeling at her best and was disappointed with her movement. She also said she was giving a trial to a new coach, Scott Humphries, and suggested that this was causing some confusion at the moment. "I am struggling with him at the moment as we are in a trial period," she said. "I am trying to do the things I did before and he is doing something different, so I don't know what I am doing.
"I'll know in a week or two whether the arrangement will last," she added. Mirza was left cursing herself for thinking too far ahead. Jankovic next plays Anna Chakvetadze, the sixth-seeded Russian, who survived an even longer contest, lasting more than three hours, and came back from a set and 1-4 down to beat her fellow Muscovite, Dinara Safina, by 6-7 (3/7), 6-4, 6-3. Earlier another Russian, the second-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova, won impressively, by 6-1, 6-2 against Lucie Safarova, the world number 40 from the Czech republic.