The Czech saved a set point when he served at 2-5, but Murray served out in the following game to take a hold on the match.
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But the Italian made life hard for the world number six, forcing a third set and breaking for a 4-3 lead in the decider before Nishikori won four of the last five games to emerge a 6-2 3-6 7-5 victor.
“I’ve only played three or four indoor clay matches in my life, so they weren’t easy conditions against a tough opponent”.
“It was generally a good match, I had chances in the first set”, Wawrinka said.
The quarter-finals will be played on Friday, where Murray will take on either Tomas Berdych or David Ferrer.
“I had the confidence that if I managed to make the rallies longer, more than three balls, I knew that things could turn around”, Nadal said.
Djokovic bounces back from an upset second round defeat to world no. 63 Jiri Vesely in the 2016 Monte-Carlo Masters, and is now on track to win his 29 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title. At the beginning, when we were warming up, I was feeling a little bit odd, but actually during the week I’ve been training well and playing well.
It remains to be seen whether Raonic will believe he has more to back up that big serve, and perhaps given the number of times his body has let him down this year, whether a small adjustment may help make him even more competitive. “He just returned unbelievably well at times and I still won 55 per cent of my second serve points, which is good”.
Seventh seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga progressed in the day’s last match to finish, seeing off home hope Albert Ramos-Vinolas 7-6 (8/6) 5-7 6-4. After winning his first clay-court titles previous year the Scot is excelling on the surface once again and will on Saturday contest his second successive Masters Series semi-final on clay.
But Murray still did enough to illustrate that, since that win in Madrid 12 months ago, he has become a much greater threat on the clay-court surface.
Elsewhere, Kei Nishikori also booked a semi-final berth with a 6-7 (6-8) 7-6 (7-1) 6-3 win against Nick Kyrgios.
Elsewhere, Australian Samantha Stosur came from behind to put out eight seeded Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro 4-6 6-2 6-3.
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Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia, celebrating her 27th birthday, reached the women’s final by beating American qualifier Louisa Chirico 6-1, 6-1 in less than an hour.
