Madrid (AFP) - Rain forced the Barcelona Open to postpone both its semi-finals on Saturday, with Carlos Alcaraz up against Alex de Minaur and Diego Schwartzman playing Pablo Carreno Busta.

The two matches will instead be held on Sunday at 11:00 am local time (0900 GMT) before the winners face each other in the final on the same day at 4:00 pm.

After repeated interruptions, both matches were level at 2-2 in the opening set on Saturday, when play for the day was cancelled.

“Given the rain situation, it has been decided to cancel, because the conditions were not good enough and the courts were not in a position to recover,” said tournament director David Ferrer.

Alcaraz is into his fourth semi-final of the season after the Spaniard knocked out top seed Stefanos Tsitsipas on Friday while De Minaur also needed three sets to defeat Britain’s Cameron Norrie.

In the other half of the draw, another Spaniard, Carreno Busta, beat Casper Ruud to book his meeting with Schwartzman, the Argentinian who came from a set down to beat Felix Auger-Aliassime.