Friday, September 22 2006 11:27 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: An erratic Sania Mirza manages to edge out Germany's Sandra Kloesel in straight sets to move into the quarterfinal of the USD 175,000 WTA Sunfeast Open here Thursday (21 Sep, 2006).

The fifth seeded Indian ace hovers between a slew of blazing winners and a series of unforced errors before playing a superb second set to show the exit door to an unimpressive Kloesel with a 7-5 6-3 scoreline at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.

Sania will now take on fourth seed Aravane Rezai of France today (22 Sep, 2006) for a place in the last four.

With the 5,000-odd crowd rooting for her, Sania improved upon her performance last year, when she went down to Hungarian Melinda Czink in a second round battle.

In the opening set, Sania's serve completely deserts her, as it does her opponent, with service breaks becoming a regular occurrence.

The two players trade breaks in the first two games before Sania demolishes the world number 123 in the third game to go ahead.

The next four games go with serves before Kloesel snatches Sania's serve in the eighth. Despite beginning with an ace, Sania makes several errors to drop serve on the third break point as the German levels at 4-4.

However, the 19-year-old Hyderabad girl plays a good ninth game, earning applause with a deft backhand passing shot and following it up with a clinical volley to break her opponent.