Draw opens up for Murray

Andy Murray reached the third round at Wimbledon with a controversial four-set win over Ivo Karlovic that prompted the giant Croatian to accuse tournament officials of bias towards the British number one.

And within hours the home title hope received a huge boost to his chances of becoming the first British Wimbledon champion since Fred Perry in 1936 when Rafael Nadal was dumped out of the tournament in a stunning upset, losing to unheralded Czech Lukas Rosol.

Suddenly the door to the final has swung open, with Nadal having been in Murray's half of the draw. The pair were seeded to clash in the semi-finals, the stage at which Nadal has beaten Murray in each of the last two years.

Against big-serving Karlovic, Murray needed to show formidable mental strength to come through 7-5 6-7 (7/5) 6-2 7-6 (7/4), with the Scot recovering from dropping the second set to edge through in a fourth-set tie-break.

But Karlovic, at 6ft 10in the tallest player ever to be ranked in the top 100, was left furious after being called for a succession of foot faults, including one in the final tie-break.

The 33-year-old, a former Wimbledon quarter-finalist, said: "In my whole life, ever since I was eight years old, I didn't do this many foot faults. 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."

And pressed on whether he felt his treatment was because he was playing against the home favourite, Karlovic said: "Definitely."

He added that he was unsure whether he would make an official complaint, saying: "I don't know what I'm going to do. 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."

Murray was diplomatic on the subject but admitted he had no idea whether the foot-fault calls were correct. He said: "That's very tough to question the integrity of Wimbledon, I would have thought. 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've never heard that before."