In a rematch that far out-stripped their 2014 final Kei Nishikori exacted revenge on Marin Cilic during another energy-sapping afternoon to go through to the semi-finals of the US Open on Friday. He will be grateful for the two-day break.

Nishikori, so often bedevilled by injury, soaked up 19 aces from the Croat to win 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-4, keeping a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium enthralled for just over four hours.

His friend and Japanese compatriot Naomi Osaka earlier crushing a virus-stricken Lesia Tsurenko in under an hour to send a chill through a tournament that is suffering serial heat-stroke.

It had cooled a little when the men went on court, but they generated plenty of their own steam off the racket in a high-calibre contest in which Nishikori converted six of his 13 break chances and Cilic five of nine. But Cilic, who has blossomed into a genuine battler, paid for his eagerness in the shot with 70 unforced errors.

The women’s quarter-final was sedate by comparison. Even allowing for the Ukrainian’s illness – which nearly forced her to pull out on the morning of the match – the 20-year-old Japanese with the American accent and a sense of humour from Mars confirmed all the expectations that have been placed on her since her arrival on the Tour two years ago with an emphatic 6-1, 6-1 win.

That catapults her into the semi-finals on Friday, her country’s first woman to go this deep in a slam since Kimiko Date at Wimbledon in 1996.

“He’s probably one of the nicest people I have ever met,” Osaka later said of her friendship with Nishikori. “We recently started talking because I was too shy before this tournament. I don’t know if I’m going to get in trouble if I say this, but he’s, like, a really big kid. He plays games and stuff too. We’re pretty similar in that sense.”

Tsurenko, making her quarter-final debut in a major, sadly provided only token resistance to the No 20 seed who put five aces past her, and forced her to commit 47 errors. Osaka now plays Madison Keys or Carla Suárez Navarro.

Osaka won as easily as did Serena Williams against her sister, Venus. Williams, who has to get past the unorthodox Latvian Anastasija Sevastova in the semi-finals on Thursday night, would not relish a final against Osaka, who still plays with the unfettered confidence of youth.

Jamie Murray’s fortnight was all but done when he and Bruno Soares bowed out to Radu Albot and Malek Jaziri, who beat the 2016 champions 7-5, 6-4 in the quarter-finals. But the Scot rescued it by reaching the mixed final with the flamboyant American Bethanie Mattek-Sands. They beat her compatriots Christina McHale and Christian Harrison 6-4, 2-6, 10-8.

There was a poignant moment on day 10 when the 2010 French Open champion Francesca Schiavone, 38, announced her retirement, in her charmingly awkward English. “It is, for me, a very important moment of my life,” she said. “I arrive this decision to say goodbye to the tennis with my heart, because my head, when I arrive here, say: “Please go to the court, fight, because I can beat many other players.’ But my heart say that I am in peace like this, that I am very happy about my career, my life, and everything. So I wake up in the morning, and I feel good.”