Murray into Wimbledon third round but defeated Karlovic calls foul

Andy Murray would potentially meet Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals.SNS Group

Andy Murray saw his Wimbledon hopes increase on Thursday evening but his own victory was not without controversy.

The biggest shock in SW19 so far came when Murray’s potential semi-final opponent, two-time champion Rafael Nadal, was dumped out by Lukas Rosol.

That opens up the competition for Murray. Though there is a long way still to go for the Scot.

A 7-5 6-7 (5/7) 6-2 7-6 win over Ivo Karlovic put Murray in the third round but his defeated opponent claimed bias on the part of the Wimbledon officials.

Karlovic was unhappy that what he saw as repeated foot faults went unpunished.

"In my whole life, ever since I was eight years old, I didn't do this many foot faults,” he said.

"It was never called when it was 30-0 or 40-0, it was always when it was 30-30 or in a tie-break. I mean, what is this? Is it Davis Cup or is it Wimbledon? After this match, the whole credibility of this tournament went down for me.

"After I don't know how many, I stood a little bit back so they could not call it and they still did. It was outrageous. It's Wimbledon, Centre Court, and they do this. I feel cheated.

"Right now I'm angry about it, because I don't expect it here. Even though it is against the English (sic) guy who they always want to win, I don't expect it here."

A diplomatic Murray said that he felt the comments were bold.

"That's very tough to question the integrity of Wimbledon, I would have thought,” said the British number one. "It's got a lot of history, a lot of tradition. There's been hundreds of thousands of matches played here over the years. I mean, I've never heard that before.

"But I need to see the videos. If there was 11 foot faults called against him and every one was incorrect, then that's completely wrong and unfair.

"But for it to happen that many times, you would think there would have been a number of fairly obvious foot faults, because you don't really see them called that much nowadays.

"If it turns out that he wasn't foot-faulting, if I was him, I'd be very, very disappointed."

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