13/11/11 - 14:42

Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi won their first ATP Masters 1000 title as a pairing when they defeated wild cards French Nicolas Mahut and Julien Benneteau in the final, winning 6-2, 6-4 in 65 minutes.

The No.7 seeds had already defeated Michael Llodra and Nenad Zimonjic (No.2) in the quarter-finals and Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor (No.3) in the semis, and made short work of the French wild cards in Sunday’s final.

The first set was one-way traffic, with the Indo-Pak Express breaking both Benneteau’s and Mahut’s first service games and parlaying their own strong services into a 6-2 score line.  The French pairing settled down after those disastrous first four games however and took the match to 4-4 in the second, but Qureshi and Bopanna were not to be denied, breaking Mahut in the ninth game of the second set then serving out for victory.

The pairing, known as the Indo-Pak Express, thus won their first ever ATP Masters 1000 final, though they did make the final of the US Open together this year where they lost to the Bryan Brothers (who were defeated here by Benneteau and Mahut). Bopanna and Qureshi also have three ATP 250 titles to their name.