{"id":596922,"date":"2026-04-11T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/596922\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:44:07","slug":"australia-crash-out-of-bjk-cup-after-britain-secure-upset-with-doubles-win-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/596922\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia crash out of BJK Cup after Britain secure upset with doubles win | Tennis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Stosur\u2019s fears of a \u201cfunky\u201d upset have been realised as Australia\u2019s team captain saw an understrength Great Britain send her side crashing out of Billie Jean King Cup<\/a> contention.<\/p>\n

After the visitors claimed both opening-day singles matches at Melbourne\u2019s John Cain Arena, the new British doubles pairing of Jodie Burrage and Harriet Dart completed a 3-0 rout in the best-of-five qualifying tie on Saturday. Their 6-3, 6-4 win over Storm Hunter and Ellen Perez gave Great Britain an unassailable lead, sending last year\u2019s semi-finalists into September\u2019s finals in China. It is the second straight year Australia have missed the eight-nation finals.<\/p>\n

Playing together for the first time, Burrage and Dart recovered from an early break against their experienced opponents and reeled off five straight games to claim the first set. A seesawing second set could have gone either way before Burrage eventually held serve to seal the result.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was going to be an incredibly tough match,\u201d Dart told Nine post-match. \u201cThey\u2019re two great players and they play a lot of doubles, and it was our first time playing together. It\u2019s a bit crazy, actually, because we played pretty well, didn\u2019t we? But it\u2019s such an honour to represent GB and to be able to make the finals as well is kind of surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia had gone into the tie as strong favourites against a Great Britain team missing their four best players, with three of those opting to focus on the European clay-court swing. But rankings counted for little as Dart led the British charge.<\/p>\n

The world No 173 upset Kimberly Birrell 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in their singles clash on Friday, building on 17-year-old debutant Mika Stojsavljevic\u2019s shock 7-6 (4), 7-5 win<\/a> over Talia Gibson. The big-serving Stojsavljevic arrived in Melbourne ranked 219 places below the world No 56, who had knocked off five top-20 opponents in a sparkling run of form<\/a> in the lead-up.<\/p>\n

Storm Hunter and Ellen Perez could not get the better of Great Britain\u2019s Jodie Anna Burrage and Harriet Dart in the doubles. Photograph: Daniel Pockett\/Getty Images for Billie Jean King Cup<\/p>\n

At 2-0 down, Australia had the weight of history against them on Saturday. Only nine teams have ever come back from 2-0 down to win since the best-of-five format was introduced in the BJK Cup in 1995. The task proved too tough for the Australians as Burrage and Dart finished the job.<\/p>\n

The Australian rising star Emerson Jones restored a touch of pride for the beaten home team, beating Katie Swan 7-5, 6-3 in their dead-rubber singles match. Jones, 17, replaced Maya Joint in the squad after the top-ranked Australian pulled out with a back injury, becoming one of the youngest BJK Cup debutants in the competition\u2019s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Stosur\u2019s fears of a \u201cfunky\u201d upset have been realised as Australia\u2019s team captain saw an understrength Great…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-596922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}