Play

January 26 is celebrated as Australia Day in Australia, but it was India who ruled the roost Down Under and made it a Republic Day worth remembering.

Sania Mirza, India's tennis icon, had cause to celebrate the most. She and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis won their 34th consecutive match together, easily defeating the pair of Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Coco Vandeweghe in their Australian Open quarter-final (video above).

Then, over in the mixed doubles, Mirza and Ivan Dodig of Croatia cruised to a comfortable win in their third round match to reach the quarter-finals, beating the pair of Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Yaroslava Shvedova in straight sets.

Giving Mirza company in the quarter-finals will be Indian tennis legend Leander Paes. Paes, partnering with Hingis, easily defeated their opponents Sloane Stephens and Jean-Julien Rojer to book a quarter-final clash with Mirza and Dodig. Of course, that means only one Indian will make it to the semis.

Play

And cricket gave cause to celebrate the performance of the women's team. Early in the day, the Indian women's cricket team chased down 141 against their Australian counterparts at Adelaide, their highest ever chase in the Twenty20 format, to win by five wickets and go 1-0 up in the three-match T20 series. The star turn came from Harmanpreet Kaur, who scored 46 off 312 balls to set up the victory.

The men didn't do too badly either. After being crushed 4-1 in the One Day International series, Dhoni's team put the smiles back on the fans' faces after comprehensively defeating Australia in the first Twenty20 by 37 runs.