{"id":599939,"date":"2026-04-11T11:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/599939\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:44:12","slug":"under-strength-gb-reach-billie-jean-king-cup-finals-after-crazy-win-over-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/599939\/","title":{"rendered":"Under-strength GB reach Billie Jean King Cup finals after \u2018crazy\u2019 win over Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great Britain are through to the Billie Jean King Cup<\/a> finals thanks to an impressive victory against Australia in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

The team got off to a dream start to the qualifiers on Friday as 17-year-old Mika Stojsavljevic marked her debut <\/a>by beating Talia Gibson 7-6 (4) 7-5.<\/p>\n

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Harriet Dart<\/a> fought back against Kimberly Birrell to win 4-6 6-3 6-3 later that day at John Cain Arena, before then helping Britain take an unassailable 3-0 lead in the doubles on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Dart and Jodie Burrage<\/a> ran out 6-3 6-4 victors against Storm Hunter and Ellen Perez, securing the Brits\u2019 place in September\u2019s finals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty crazy, we played pretty well actually didn\u2019t we,” said Dart. \u201cIt\u2019s such an honour to represent GB and to make the finals as well is kind of surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Emerson Jones overcame Katie Swan 7-5 6-3 as Australia recorded a consolation win in game four.<\/p>\n

\"Jodie<\/p>\n

Jodie Burrage and Harriet Dart got the job done in the doubles (Getty Images for Billie Jean Kin)<\/p>\n

\"GB<\/p>\n

GB could celebrate reaching September’s BJK Cup Finals (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Billie Jean King Cup finals start in Shenzhen on September 21, with the Brits joined by seven other nations in China.<\/p>\n

Great Britain captain Anne Keothavong<\/a> said: \u201cWe\u2019re all just overjoyed. Look, it\u2019s been an unbelievable week here in Melbourne, and the tennis that was played yesterday and today was just fantastic. I couldn\u2019t really ask anything more of my team. I\u2019m so proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Keothavong has skippered the side since 2016 and believes Great Britain are \u201cdue something special\u201d having reached the semi-finals last year.<\/p>\n

Asked if they could win the Billie Jean King Cup, the captain said: \u201cI bloody hope so. Look, that\u2019s always the ultimate goal, and I know we\u2019ve got players and a strength in depth, you know, in the UK to do something special in this competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019ve felt that for some time, and sometimes you need a bit of luck for everything to come together.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, yeah, absolutely, when we head to the finals, whoever is on my team, we\u2019re there. We\u2019re not there to make up the numbers, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Great Britain are through to the Billie Jean King Cup finals thanks to an impressive victory against Australia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,1804,38306,80066,257305,292303,151677,291517,44,52477],"class_list":{"0":"post-599939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-billie-jean-king","11":"tag-billie-jean-king-cup","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-harriet-dart","14":"tag-jodie-burrage","15":"tag-kimberly-birrell","16":"tag-mika-stojsavljevic","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-talia-gibson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}