General / Editor / 13 June 2007 /

Jelena Jankovic made light work of Tsvetana Pironkova in the second round of the DFS Classic, claiming a straight sets victory over the 19-year-old.

The world number three has not played on grass for 12 months but showed few signs of rustiness as she came from a break down to take the first set, before dominating the second in just 20 minutes to wrap up a 6-4 6-1 victory over the Bulgarian.

The second seed, who is among the favourites in an undeveloped Betfair market, will now face talented 20-year-old Russian Maria Kirilenko in round three in Birmingham.

Having reached the semi-finals of the French Open, a confident Jankovic is looking to stay in the tournament as long as possible to fine-tune her preparations for Wimbledon, where she trades at 13 to win the tournament behind Serena Williams (4.2), Justine Henin (4.5) and Maria Sharapova (6.2).

Sharapova is also fancied to do well in the West Midlands this week but is still nursing a sore shoulder after a six-week period of rest prior to the French Open and may struggle to reach the business end of the SW19 tournament should the problem flare up again.

However the 20-year-old world number two took just over an hour to beat American qualifier Lilia Osterloh in the second round, as she looks to add the title to her 2004 and 2005 Edgbaston successes.

The first set was evenly contested with the Russian below par, but once she found her feet on the grass court, it was one-way traffic as the US star had no answer to her powerful ground stokes.

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