A Centre Court seat was the hot ticket at Wimbledon on Wednesday when fans on the Championships’ main show court were treated to two of the best matches of the tournament so far.

The first of the day was a classic – one of the truly great quarter-finals of all time.

Three times Marin Cilic was a point away from his first semi-final in SW19 only for the great Roger Federer to deny him at the death 6-3 in the fifth set.

And there was more to come. Much more. It was the Andy Murray fans on the edge of their seats in the early evening, when the Scot came through an enthralling first set tiebreak against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and eventually on to victory in five high quality sets.

Away from Centre, No.1 Court fans witnessed the Milos Raonic train rumbling into another Wimbledon semi-final when he ended Sam Querrey’s run, and later Tomas Berdych progressed with ease against Frenchman Lucas Pouille in straight sets.

On Friday then, Raonic will face Federer, and Berdych takes on Murray for a date in Sunday’s men’s singles final.

Day 9 in numbers

• Federer overtakes Martina Navratilova with the most Grand Slam singles wins by a man or woman. The Swiss moves to a 307-50 win-loss record, one ahead of Navratilova (306-49)
• Federer moves to 84 match wins at Wimbledon and now shares the lead with Jimmy Connors. Murray is into joint 7th on 51 with Bjorn Borg
• Federer also equals Connors’ record of 11 Wimbledon semi-finals
• At 34 years 336 days, Federer is the oldest man in the Open era to reach a Wimbledon semi-final since Ken Rosewall (39 years 246 days) in 1974
• Murray’s victory over Tsonga moved him to 27 consecutive wins against Frenchmen at majors
• Murray is into his 20th Grand Slam semi-final, Federer his 40th
• Murray notched up his 100th Tour-level match win on grass - the second active man to reach that milestone after Federer
• Murray will play his 7th Wimbledon semi-final on Friday. He moves alongside Novak Djokovic and his coach Ivan Lendl in 6th place on the Open era list for most appearances in the last four in SW19
• Raonic is into his third Grand Slam semi-final, which equals Eugenie Bouchard for the most Grand Slam singles semis reached by a Canadian
• Raonic is the first Canadian to reach the last four at Wimbledon on multiple occasions
• Raonic struck his 114th ace of the Fortnight to move alongside John Isner at the top of the leaderboard
• Berdych is now the third Czech male to reach multiple Wimbledon semi-finals after Lendl and Jan Kodes
• Berdych is into his sixth Grand Slam semi-final, equalling Kodes. Lendl leads the Czechs with 27 semi-finals at the majors