Top seeds Leander Paes and his Zimbabwean partner Cara Black breezed into the semifinals of Wimbledon’s mixed doubles event with a facile straight set win over 11th seeded Andre Sa and Ai Sugiyama here on Thursday.The Indo-Zimbabwean duo needed a little over an hour to swamp the Sa-Sugiyama pair 6-3, 6-3 in the lop-sided quarterfinal match.In the semifinals, they will take on 12th seeded pair of Australian Stephen Huss and his Spaniard partner Virginia Ruano Pascual.The Huss-Pascal duo defeated fourth seeds Kevin Ullyett and Su-Wei Hsieh 6-3, 5-7, 9-7 in a hard-fought quarterfinal match.

Venus and Serena Williams won in contrasting fashion on Thursday to set up their fourth all-sister Wimbledon final and eighth meeting in a Grand Slam title match.Two-time champion Serena saved a match point and overcame Elena Dementieva 6-7 (4), 7-5, 8-6 in 2 hours, 49 minutes. Five-time winner Venus needed only 51 minutes to overwhelm Dinara Safina 6-1, 6-0 and reach her eighth Wimbledon final.

South African captain Graeme Smith’s inspirational leadership and prolific batting fetched him the ‘Cricketer of the Year’ and ‘Test Cricketer of the Year’ at the country’s annual cricket awards here on Tuesday. A.B. de Villiers was chosen ODI Cricketer of the Year and J-P Duminy the ‘Players’ Player of the Year’.