Harriet Dart and Jodie Burrage won their doubles rubber in straight sets to send Great Britain through to September’s Billie Jean King Cup finals with an impressive 3-0 win against Australia.
Dart and Burrage, teaming up for the first time, defeated Storm Hunter and Ellen Perez 6-3 6-4 on Melbourne’s hard courts to clinch the best-of-five qualifying tie.
Great Britain had earlier won both of Friday’s singles matches, with 17-year-old Mika Stojsavljevic stunning Talia Gibson – ranked more than 200 places above her – in straight sets on her competition debut before Dart recovered from a set down to beat Kimberly Birrell.
“That feels amazing,” said Burrage. “I’m proud of us for the way that we played, the way that we came out and managed to close that out.”
Great Britain, the 2025 semi-finalists, had been the underdogs heading into the tie, as they were without four players ranked inside the singles top 100 – Emma Raducanu, Katie Boulter, Fran Jones, and Sonay Kartal.
But they overcame the disparity in ranking and experience to reach the finals for the third year in a row.
After being broken in their opening service game and slipping to a 3-1 deficit, Dart and Burrage roared back with a run of five games to take the first set.
All four players struggled with their serves in a topsy-turvy second set, with four consecutive breaks en route to 3-3. Great Britain then made the decisive break in the ninth game before Burrage held her nerve to secure the win.
“They’re two great players. They play a lot of doubles and it was our first time playing together,” said Dart.
“It’s crazy actually because we played pretty well and to be able to make the finals is just kind of surreal.”
Great Britain are the second team to qualify for September’s eight-team finals in Shenzhen, joining hosts China, and have reached the last four at the past two tournaments. Losers Australia will compete in November’s play-offs.
