MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Super-fit reigning champion Novak Djokovic shrugged off the exertions of his five-hour epic with Stanislas Wawrinka as he booked an Australian Open semi-final with David Ferrer yesterday.

The world number one, showing no ill-effects from his late-night showdown 48 hours earlier, suffered a second-set lapse against Czech fifth seed Tomas Berdych, but was never seriously troubled in the 6-1, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 win.

The resilient Serb, who came through a record 5-hours 53-minutes final against Rafael Nadal last year, said he was glad to get the job done against Berdych in 2-hours 31-minutes — exactly half the length of his match with Wawrinka.

While Djokovic will face Ferrer, in the women’s competition Maria Sharapova set up a showdown with China’s Li Na as she roared into the semi-finals for the record loss of only nine games.

The world number two swamped her latest victim, fellow Russian Ekaterina Makarova, 6-2, 6-2, in a quickfire one-hour 6-minutes, continuing her blistering start to the season.

Sharapova was forced to pull out of her warm-up tournament with injury, hitting up with Australian junior boys instead, but she has been remorseless in her rampage to the last four at Melbourne Park.

Her record of losing just nine games in five matches obliterates the 22-yearold tournament record of Monica Seles, who dropped 12 en route to the 1991 semi-finals.

Despite the scoreline, the four-time Grand Slam winner insisted it had been close against Makarova, against whom she has never lost in five matches.

Sharapova, 25, will face her sternest test yet against China’s Li, who halted the 13-match unbeaten run of Agnieszka Radwanska to reach her first Grand Slam semi-final since she won the 2011 French Open.

Li, the world number six, became the first player this year to take a set off the Polish fourth seed when she edged a tight opener containing seven breaks of serve.

Radwanska came storming back by winning eight straight points to take the first two games of the second set to love. But Li then rattled off five consecutive games before serving it out for a 7-5, 6-3 win.

Meanwhile, Ferrer clawed back from two sets down after his fellow Spaniard Nicolas Almagro blew a golden chance to reach his first major semi-final in 34 attempts.

Tenth seed Almagro outplayed the world number five, whom he has never beaten, in the opening two sets and served for the match three times, only to falter on each occasion.

Ferrer seized the lifeline and finished too strongly for his Davis Cup team-mate, clinching it with two service breaks in the fifth set as he won, 4-6, 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7/4), 6-2, in three-hours 44-minutes.

Today, Roger Federer and Andy Murray will bid to contest the other men’s semi-final when they take on Frenchmen Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Jeremy Chardy respectively.

Serena Williams and defending champion Victoria Azarenka are on a collision course in the other half of the women’s draw and will play Sloane Stephens and Svetlana Kuznetsova for a place in the semi-finals.