At 4:30am GMT on the Margaret Court Arena, top seeds Roberta Vinci and Sara Errani will take on the fourth-seeded pairing of Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina.
Errani and Vinci secured their spot in the semi-finals after a tense and thrilling victory over the Williams sisters on Tuesday. Although ranked as the top partnership in the world, everyone is the underdog when they take on Team Williams, and few expected the Italians to offer much resistance.
However, Venus and Serena were off their game in the quarter-final, and Errani and Vinci capitalised. Lobbing and spinning the ball, and often choosing to target Venus rather than Serena, they recovered from a set and a break down to win 3-6, 7-6, 7-5 and remain on track for their first title in Melbourne. However, they will be only slight favourites against Makarova and Vesnina, a solid pairing who each made deep runs in the singles event.
The other semi-final will be the last match on the Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday, with the Australian duo of Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacqua facing the American/Chinese team of Varvara Lepchenko and Saisai Zheng.
Sixteen-year-old Barty has made serious waves at this year’s Australian Open. After taking a set off Dominika Cibulkova in the first round of the singles competition, the youngster has flourished in the doubles. She and Dellacqua have beaten several highly-ranked teams on their way to the last four, including the vastly experienced third seeds Maria Kirilenko and Lisa Raymond.
Meanwhile, Lepchenko and Zheng have shown remarkable endurance: they have won all four of their matches in three sets, and came through a quarter-final that lasted almost three hours. The second semi-final could go either way, but the home crowd are likely to give vociferous support to Barty and Dellacqua.
