LONDON Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan and Rohan Bopanna of India battled into the third round at Wimbledon on Friday.

The duo had to overcome a strong challenge from Philipp Marx of Germany and Igor Zelenay of Slovakia to win 6-7,6-4,6-4,4-6 ,13-11 on Court 16 at the Championships.

In the third round Qureshi and Bopanna face East European pair of Lukas Lacho of Slovakia and Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukraine.

The South Asian pair, who also reached the third round at the last year's championships, is promoting peace with the slogan “stop war, start tennis.”

The Indo-Pak duo had strong support in the stands from family and friends, as well as Indian tennis star Sania Mirza, who is married to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.

Qureshi also figured in the mixed doubles category with Alla Kudryavtseva of Russia but failed to progress further with 6-7,3-6 loss to US pair of Bob Bryan and Lindsay Davenport in the first round. —APP/Dawn.com