Second seeds Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles squandered chances aplenty to go down 6-7 (4-7), 2-6 against Rik De Voest and Dmitry Tursonov in the quarterfinals of the USD 2,233,500 Dubai Tennis championships here.

With Mahesh's defeat, the Indian challenge ended at the event as Leander Paes and Prakash Amritraj have already exited with their respective partners.

The Indo-Bahamian partner squandered as many as eight breakpoints in the fiercely fought first set, which was eventually decided by a tie-breaker. On the other hand, the unseeded South African-Russian pair converted two of the three chances in the first set.

Bhupathi and Knwoles saved three breakpoints in the second set but were broken twice and lost the match in one hour and 17 minutes. They will get 90 ranking points each and split USD 14,050 prize money between them.