Top seed Maria Sharapova won a hard-hitting all-Russian clash against Vera Zvonareva to move into the Australian Open quarter-finals in Melbourne.

Zvonareva provided stiff competition and saved two match points before Sharapova triumphed 7-5 6-4.

It booked her a date with another Russian, 12th seed Anna Chakvetadze, in the quarter-finals after Chakvetadze beat Switzerland's Patty Schnyder 6-4 6-1 on Monday.

Since struggling through her marathon opening match against Frenchwoman Camille Pin in severe heat, Sharapova has been in impressive touch.

The reigning US Open champion conceded a combined total of only seven games in her second and third round matches before overpowering 22nd seed Zvonareva.

Sharapova joined two former world No.1s - Switzerland's Martina Hingis and Belgian Kim Clijsters - as the only three of the women's top eight seeds to make it through to the quarter-finals.

But all are in the same half of the draw, with Sharapova to face either Hingis or Clijsters in a semi-final should she get past Chakvetadze.

Sharapova and Zvonareva traded fierce, flat groundstrokes throughout the match.

While Sharapova always looked to have the slight edge, mainly courtesy of her more powerful serve, it took her a long time to convert that advantage on the scoreboard.

Zvonareva was down a total of nine break points in her opening five service games, but managed to save them all, including three in a long ninth game.

Sharapova, who was not down a break point at any stage during the first set, finally broke Zvonareva's serve in the 11th game before serving out the set.

After fighting so hard to stay in touch in the first set, Zvonareva lost her composure early in the second, giving up her opening service game with a double-fault.

Sharapova broke serve again to take a 5-2 lead, seemingly taking complete control, but there was still some drama to come.

With Sharapova serving for the match for the first time, Zvonareva finally managed to put pressure on her opponent's serve and converted her first break point of the match to take the score to 5-3.

Serving for the match again at 5-4, Sharapova again struggled, going down 0-40.

She showed great poise to fight back and gain her first match point, but wasted it with a double fault, needing two more before finally clinching the match with a forehand winner at the end of a long rally.

Sharapova, who will replace Belgian Justine Henin-Hardenne as world No.1 when new rankings are released on Monday by virtue of reaching the fourth round, said she was relieved to stop the match going into a third set.

"It was very good to win in two tonight because I have had some really tough matches with her and I knew that at any moment of the match she could come up with the goods," she said.

She said 19-year-old Chakvetadze would be a challenging quarter-final opponent.

"I thought I played a lot better today than I did in my previous rounds and I'll definitely have to step it up against her," she said.

"I look forward to it because she's coming up, she's had some great results in the last couple of months, she's a young Russian that's coming up."

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