Crowd favourite Marcos Baghdatis' giant-killing run through the Australian Open will continue into the semi-finals, after he defeated seventh seed Ivan Ljubicic in a five-set thriller at Melbourne Park.

The unseeded 20-year-old Cypriot won 6-4 6-2 4-6 3-6 6-3 to set up a semi-final meeting with Argentinian fourth seed David Nalbandian.

While Baghdatis had never been past the fourth round of a grand slam event before this tournament, Nalbandian will be showing him plenty of respect after his performances here.

Ljubicic was his third big scalp of the tournament, the biggest being second seed Andy Roddick in the fourth round. But he also knocked out 17th seeded Czech Radek Stepanek in the second round.

Ljubicic had been in near-faultless form leading into the match, having won every set he had played previously in the event, including a comprehensive rout of former winner Thomas Johansson in the fourth round.

But Baghdatis quickly changed that, dominating the first two sets, with the same flamboyant, but remarkably error-low, style of play that enabled him to surge to his shock victory over Roddick.

A large and very loud group of supporters again gathered in Rod Laver Arena to cheer him on and he rewarded them with some scintillating play.

He put Ljubicic under pressure on nearly all of the Croatian's service games in the first two sets, while his own serve worked beautifully and he was rarely troubled.

But after his nerveless display in the first two sets, the match took a major momentum shift late in the third set, as Baghdatis tightened slightly for the first time.

Serving at 4-5, he let slip a group of unforced errors to give up his serve to 15, the first time he was broken in the match, handing Ljubicic the set.

Excited by finally seeing a chink in Baghdatis' armour, and cheered on by his own band of Croatian-Australian supporters, Ljubicic was a renewed player in the fourth set.

He opened it with three consecutive aces and did not drop a point in his first three service games, while Baghdatis appeared to weary and again slipped in some soft unforced errors to lose his serve in the fifth game.

After taking it into a fifth set, it appeared the experience and increasingly solid play of Ljubicic and the seemingly waning form of Baghdatis had the Croatian on target for victory.

But the match had another twist, with Baghdatis, seemingly energised by the chants of his supporters, willing his way back to the form he had displayed in the first two sets.

After saving two break points on his own serve in the third game, he broke Ljubicic in the following game, the winning point of that game sealed with a sensational crosscourt forehand passing shot at full pace.

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