The story so far: Andy Murray, the national treasure, is leading Stefanos Tsitsipas by two sets to one.

On Thursday night, he had kept the Centre Court crowd on the edge of their seats for two hours and 52 minutes as he fought back from a set down, slowly – and at times quite brilliantly – bringing the match under his control.

When, at 10.39pm, he was forced to pack up for the night due to the local curfew, he had the crowd in the palm of his hand and a place in the third round within touching distance.

Oh, and he had survived a nasty tumble in the penultimate point of Thursday’s chapter, one that had him yelping in pain for a moment.

Now, 17 hours and 44 minutes later on Friday afternoon, he has to pick up where he left off. Luckily, the crowd does not take much warming up but Murray is taking time to catch up with them.

The left leg looks fine – earlier reports from the practice courts suggested that the late-night fall had left no lingering after effects – and he is ready to set Centre Court alight.

Oh, if only it were that simple.

Murray tried everything he could think of to stop the No.5 seed from moving into the third round but it was not enough. It took two days, five sets and four hours and 40 minutes but it was Tsitsipas who emerged triumphant 7-6(3), 6-7(2), 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-4.

“It was nerve wracking,” Tsitsipas said. “I had to overcome it. It was an obstacle – a big one. It’s actually difficult when you’ve grown up watching him play on this court. I had goosebumps when he won his first title here and I felt for him of how much it meant to him, this courageous run he had in 2012.

"He was part of the top four for a very long time and I looked up to him. I looked up to Novak, Roger and Rafa so these four guys shaped the game and are the reason I am the player I am today.”

Now, with all the tension and drama of the night before, it was hardly surprising that both men were going to take a little while to shake the stiffness from their legs.

It wasn’t that they started slowly, it was just that they were not playing at the breathtaking level of the previous evening.

There was also the small matter of the balance of the match.

When they stopped on Thursday, Murray was in charge. He had worked for two hours to snatch the momentum from Tsitsipas’s racket strings and having got it, he ran with it.

But now he had to start again knowing that any hiccup, any error that allowed the Greek to take the lead in the fourth set, could prove fatal for his chances.

The last thing he wanted to see on the other side of the net was the confident, aggressive and deadly accurate Tsitsipas of the first two sets.

After half an hour there was not a gnat’s whisker between them. Not a break point chance, hardly an error – forced or unforced – to speak of.

Murray was keeping his rival’s forehand relatively quiet and he was building his points with craft and guile. But then Tsitsipas would unleash another thunderbolt from the baseline and the point had gone.

The one clear leader in this contest was the crowd. They made their feelings clear early on: Murray was their man.

They cheered when he won a point; they booed when Tsitsipas queried a line call and then they burst into rapturous applause when Murray so much as raised an eyebrow.

It was a different crowd to the late-nighters of Thursday but their heart was in exactly the same place.

For an hour they played cat and mouse as they edged towards another tie-break.

Muray could not find the serving accuracy that had won him the third set nor could he attack from the back of the court as he had the previous night. Tsitsipas, meanwhile, was sticking to his two tried and trusted weapons: huge serve and a blistering forehand. And he was winning the tie-break.

Suddenly Murray looked weary while the Greek was looking just like that man who had tormented the former champion for the greater part of the first two sets.

He marched through the tie-break and broke for a 2-1 lead in the fifth set. There was no way back for Murray from there.

Tsitsipas now meets world No.60 Laslo Djere. 

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