Australian Open LIVE: Cameron Norrie faces Alexander Zverev in fourth round

Cameron Norrie 2-1 Alexander Zverev*

He holds to love, with two unreturnable drop shots thrown in at the beginning after some good first serves!

*Cameron Norrie 1-1 Alexander Zverev

A quick hold to love for Zverev, with his big serve too powerful for Norrie to make any inroads early on.

Cameron Norrie 1-0 Alexander Zverev*

Excellent opening hold from Cameron Norrie!

It was a bit hairy at 30-30 as Zverev went just wide with a backhand down the line, but Norrie sealed the game superbly with an overhead smash at the net, wrong-footing his German opponent!

Coming to the net and being aggressive is going to be key for the British No 1 today…

Norrie will get us underway in this best-of-five set match on serve on Margaret Court Arena!

Both players are out on court warming up on the Margaret Court Arena.

Norrie has not beaten Zverev in four previous encounters – but then again he hadn’t beaten Casper Ruud in three past matches before beating him in round three.

Big afternoon under the Melbourne sun for the British No 1!

Good morning and welcome to live coverage of Cameron Norrie’s fourth round match at the Australian Open against Alexander Zverev!

The British No 1 is bidding for a first victory over a top-10 player at a Grand Slam as he eyes a quarter-final spot. Both players are expected on Margaret Court Arena in the next 15 minutes or so.

The winner will face either second seed Carlos Alcaraz or Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic, who meet in the night session on Rod Laver Arena, while third seed Daniil Medvedev is currently a set up against Portugal’s Nuno Borges earlier on Melbourne Park’s biggest court.

A tearful Elina Svitolina was forced to retire with a back injury only three games into her fourth-round clash with Linda Noskova at the Australian Open.

The former world number three, who has made a very impressive return following the birth of daughter Skai last year, appeared the favourite to make the final from a wide open top half of the draw.

But her back locked up in the first game of the match and she sobbed as she called it a day trailing 3-0.

No matter how much Alex de Minaur screeched and sprinted, from side-to-side with trademark velocity and determination, you always felt the admirable Australian No 1 was going to fall just short come the end. This fourth-round clash against fifth seed Andrey Rublev was always going to be swashbuckling – if that needed any more clarity, its night-time billing on Rod Laver Arena over ten-time champion Novak Djokovic forecasted something close to a thriller down under. De Minaur spoke in the build-up of “earning the right” to fill that match-of-the-day slot.

But forget the day: this clash was the match of the Australian Open so far.

This was one was always going five sets. Ultimately, the final-set bagel in favour of Rublev far from told the whole story. For this four-hour and 14-minute slug-athon – which ebbed and flowed in a fashion where holding serve at times seemed tougher than breaking serve – encapsulated the sheer ferociousness of the next generation of men’s players in their 20s. Rublev prevailed, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-0, and will face Jannik Sinner in the quarter-finals as he looks to reach the last four of a Grand Slam for the very first time.