Wawrinka in Chennai on Saturday. (AFP)

Chennai: Reigning champion Marin Cilic played flawless tennis on Saturday to get past a struggling Janko Tipsarevic and set up a title clash against Stanislas Wawrinka in the Chennai Open.

Cilic vanquished his opponent 6-1, 6-3 in just 84 minutes but third seed Wawrinka had to fight hard to overcome a strong challenge from Israel’s Dudi Sela, beating him 6-4, 2-6, 7-5 in the other semi-final.

The goodly crowd at the Nungambakkam tennis stadium kept chanting “Janko, Janko” from the beginning but it had little effect on second seed Cilic who finished his job in the most clinical fashion.

His grip over the match never loosened as Cilic broke Tipsarevic’s serve time and again to leave the Serb totally clueless. “I had my game plan ready,” Cilic said after the match. But then, Cilic hardly had to change his plan as Tipsarevic himself made his rival’s job easy.

A man of brilliant skills, the Serb could only display his genius in flashes. For the best part of the match he was too erratic and temperamental.

Cilic looked awesome in the first set. He played some breathtaking forehand shots from the baseline to pocket the match easily.

The other semi-final, that lasted two hours and 32 minutes, was a hard fought encounter as both Wawrinka and Sela went hammer and tongs at each other. The first set went on serve till the 10th game before Wawrinka broke through.

The second set belonged to Sela. He broke Wawrinka in the third and the seventh games to win it in just 39 minutes.

However, the Swiss came back strongly in the final set to clinch the issue in the 12th game when Sela hit a return straight into the net.

“It was a real tough match,” admitted Wawrinka. “It was very close as Sela played good tennis. In the final I need to play real hard to beat Cilic.”

In the doubles semi-final, India’s Somdev Dev Varman and Sanam Singh went down to Yen-Hsun Lu (Taipei) and Janko Tipsarevic (Serbia) 3-6, 6-4, 5-10.