Ferrer powers through

Fifth seed David Ferrer neatly stepped over a potential banana skin in Melbourne as he continues his bid to match his achievements at last year's Australian Open, where he reached the semifinals of a Grand Slam for the second time in his career.

Ferrer, who successfully defended his title at the Auckland Open as a warm-up for the first major of the season, defeated Richard Gasquet, the outrageously talented but somewhat erratic French world number 17, 6-4, 6-4, 6-1 in less than two hours, breaking his opponent seven times. The Spaniard was also aided by Gasquet's low success rate on points on his first serve.

Ferrer, whose pre-season regime includes grueling bike training sessions, will have to scale a mountain or two to contest the last four for a second consecutive year. On the other side of the net will be defending champion, world number one and current man-to-beat Novak Djokovic.

The Serbian, who lost just six matches last season, overcame a typically robust challenge from local hero Lleyton Hewitt in their fourth round match. Hewitt, who missed most of last season with a foot injury and has dropped to 181 in the ranking, pulled off a shock win over 23rd seed Milos Raonic in the previous round but was unable to do much to prevent Djokovic strolling to a 6-1, 6-3 lead.

However, the Australian rallied and set Djokovic on the back foot in the third, taking it 6-4, before the defending champion reasserted himself to win the fourth set 6-3.

Ferrer holds a decent record against Djokovic, winning their most recent encounter at last season's ATP World Tour Finals, although the Serbian had been carrying injuries since his US Open win. Djokovic is 6-5 over Ferrer, who enjoys his greatest success against the world number one on clay.

Another fan of the crushed red brick, Rafa Nadal, will bid to reach the semifinals for the first time since he lifted the title in 2009 when he meets seventh seed Tomas Berdych in the Rod Laver Arena in Tuesday's evening session. "Berdych has a great serve and I will have to be very concentrated on mine and try to lose very few because breaks will be very hard to get and when they come they will have to be guarded like a treasure," said the second seed.