Sydney: Defending champion James Blake cruised into the final of the Sydney International without  a shot in the semifinals when Austria's Jurgen Melzer
defaulted Friday, citing illness.

Blake will play the winner of a later match between Richard Gasquet and Carlos Moya _ Blake's first round opponent at the Australian Open next week.

Melzer appeared to be suffering from the broiling summer heat Down Under. Temperatures were hovering around 38 Celsius (100 F) Friday afternoon.
 

He is the seventh player this week to either withdraw or retire from a match in Sydney, and Lleyton Hewitt was a late withdrawal with a calf muscle injury.

No. 3 ranked Nikolay Davydenko was fined US 10,000 ( 7,175) Thursday by the ATP for unsportmansmanlike conduct, after saying nobody cares about the tournament, a traditional warmup for the Open, the season opening Grand Slam event. Davydenko retired with a foot injury after losing the first set of his opening match, saying he was
not overly concerned about the smaller tournaments.

Rafael Nadal, Paradorn Srichaphan, Dmitry Tursunov, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova also pulled out of the tournament citing either injury or illness.

In the woman''s final, Belgium's Kim Clijsters will play Jelena Jankovic, who is on a nine game winning streak following her tournament victory in Auckland last week.