Australian Open 2016: Jamie Murray develops instant rapport with partner Bruno Soares to race into doubles final

The Scot will play in his third successive Grand Slam final this weekend

Jamie Murray plays a forehand during his and Bruno Soares’ 6-3, 6-1 doubles semi-finals victory against Adrian Mannarino and Lucas Pouille (Getty)

Being the less famous brother in a high-achieving family has not always been easy for Jamie Murray, but Britain’s best doubles player is on a roll.

The 29-year-old Scot will play in his third successive Grand Slam final here at the Australian Open and is hoping that his brother Andy can make this a weekend to remember. If Andy beats Milos Raonic in his semi-final, the Murrays will become the first pair of brothers in the Open era to play in the singles and doubles finals at the same Grand Slam tournament.

Four or five years ago the elder Murray’s career appeared to be going nowhere, but a highly successful partnership with the Australian John Peers revived his fortunes and his new venture this year alongside the Brazilian Bruno Soares is paying an instant dividend.

Murray, who is already ranked No 7 in the world in doubles, is expected to climb to No 2, matching his brother’s position in singles, if he wins his first Grand Slam doubles title here to add to the mixed doubles crown he won with Jelena Jankovic at Wimbledon nine years ago. He is only the second British man in the Open era to have reached the doubles final here, Jeremy Bates having finished runner-up alongside Sweden’s Peter Lundgren in 1988.

Soares and Murray, who reached the final by crushing France’s Adrian Mannarino and Lucas Pouille 6-3, 6-1, will be the favourites. Their opponents are the hugely experienced Daniel Nestor, a 43-year-old Canadian, and the 37-year-old Czech, Radek Stepanek, who are the oldest pair to reach a Grand Slam men’s doubles final in the Open era.

Eyebrows were raised when Murray parted company with Peers last year at the end of their most successful season. They reached the finals at Wimbledon and the US Open and qualified for the year-ending Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. Murray has too generous a spirit to admit as much but the consensus in some quarters was that the pair might have achieved even more had Peers not tensed up at the biggest moments.

To an outsider Soares might not have seemed the obvious choice as Murray’s next partner. The 33-year-old Brazilian, who split with his own long-term partner Alexander Peya at the end of last year, has won 21 doubles titles, but this will be only his second Grand Slam final after he finished runner-up with Peya at the 2013 US Open.

However, both Murray and Soares could see how they might thrive together. “I think we complement each other well,” Soares said. “Jamie is really good at the net, really fast. He puts on a lot of pressure.

“One of my abilities is to make balls from the back. When I’m playing well, I’m quite consistent on returns and second balls, so that allows Jamie to be aggressive and play his game really strong and vice versa. He’s got a great serve. He helps me a lot when I serve. I don’t have a big serve.”

The partnership has gelled immediately. Murray and Soares won their first title together in only their second tournament in Sydney earlier this month and have lost only once in their first 11 matches as a team.

Murray said: “I really wanted to play with Bruno. He’s a guy I thought I could really do good things with. Louis Cayer, my coach, was pushing me as well to go and try play with Bruno. Thankfully, he wanted to play. I really believed we could do a lot of great things on the court together.

“From our first match in Doha we had good vibes on the court together. I felt comfortable, I knew what he was trying to do on the court, and he’s really good at trying to set me up to do what I can do best up at the net. It’s been going well ever since. Three weeks later we find ourselves in the final. It’s a great achievement for us, but we want to go one step further.”

Another Scot, Gordon Reid, became the first Briton to reach a Grand Slam men’s singles wheelchair final. Reid, who beat the world No 1 Shingo Kunieda in his opening singles match, earned his place in Saturday’s final against Joachim Gérard by beating Gustavo Fernandez 6-3, 6-7, 9-7.