Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Team captain Sam Stosur’s fears of a “funky” upset have been realised as an understrength Great Britain sent Australia crashing out of Billie Jean King Cup contention.
After the visitors claimed both opening-day singles matches at Melbourne’s John Cain Arena, British doubles pairing 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’s semi-finalists back to September’s Finals in China.
Burrage and Dart recovered from an early break and reeled off five straight games to claim the first set.
A see-sawing second set could have gone either way before Burrage eventually held serve to seal the result.
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.
The world No.173 upset Kimberly Birrell in their singles clash, building on 17-year-old debutant Mika Stojsavljevic’s shock win over top-ranked Australian Talia Gibson.
Big-serving Stojsavljevic went in ranked 219 places below Gibson, who had knocked off five top-20 opponents in a sparkling run of form in the lead-up.
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 – formerly known as the Federation Cup – in 1995.
The task proved too tough for the Australians as Burrage and Dart finished the job.
