Rafa Nadal crushes Stan Wawrinka to reach Shanghai semi-finals

World number one Djokovic, twice champion in Shanghai, was tested by Australian Bernard Tomic before winning 7-6(6) 6-1 to stay on course for a ninth title of the year having picked up his eighth last week in Beijing.

Murray had no such trouble as he breezed past Tomas Berdych in fine style with a 6-1 6-3 victory.

World number one Djokovic will play Murray in the semi-finals on Saturday with a chance to avenge his defeat by the Scot at the Montreal Masters - the first match Murray had won against Djokovic in over two years, and one of only five matches that Djokovic has lost all season.

Nadal, a winner of 14 grand slam titles, suffered a second-round defeat to Dustin Brown at Wimbledon and was ousted in the U.S. Open third round by Fabio Fognini but has enjoyed a resurgence since arriving in China - and on Friday he enjoyed a landmark win as he earned a first top-five scalp for over a year.

The 29-year-old Spaniard, seeded eighth in Shanghai, reached the final in Beijing last week and needed little more than an hour to breeze past French Open champion Wawrinka, who toiled for close to three hours late on Thursday to get past Marin Cilic.

Swiss Wawrinka, who had won his last two matches against Nadal, avoided the ignominy of suffering a bagel in the second set by claiming the sixth game after his opponent had raced to 5-0 on the back of a nine-game winning run.

Nadal, hoping to grab one of the four remaining ATP World Tour Finals spots in London, will next meet Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga for a place in Sunday's title decider.

Tsonga got the better of South Africa's Kevin Anderson in a gruelling 7-6(6) 5-7 6-4 match between two of the circuit's biggest hitters.

The Frenchman saved three set points during the tiebreaker and secured an early break in the deciding set to carry him through to the last four.

"Being in the semi-finals is a great result for me," Nadal told the ATP website.

"I hadn't played the semi-finals on hard court all year and now I am playing two weeks in a row in the final rounds.

"That's a big improvement for me. In terms of confidence, in terms of level of tennis, I am playing better. Very happy for that because I am working so hard.

"[On meeting Tsonga next] It is a court that he likes to play on. The court is quick. He feels comfortable on these surfaces because he has a huge serve, very, very good forehand.

"He's a very competitive player. When he's in the semi-finals it's because he's playing well. So it will be a very tough match."

Let's keep the champagne on ice for now. It was an outstanding performance from Nadal, but as wonderful as it was to see there's a long way to go before we can put him back at the top table of tennis.

Simply put, the scoreline in this match says more about Wawrinka coming off the boil a bit than it does about Nadal heating up once again. And truth be told, given the busy seasons the rest of the top five have had compared with Nadal with his series of early exits, we should be wary of reading too much into this result. Nadal made the final in Beijing last week and got demolished 6-2 6-2 by Djokovic; until he can push the world number one harder than that, we can't say anything concrete about his 2016 prospects.