ANDY MURRAY may request to play his third-round match here tomorrow night, local time, in order to give himself an extended recovery period after sustaining a nasty ankle injury which had him worried during his win over Andrey Rublev at Melbourne Park.

The Scot slipped behind the baseline early in the third set of his 6-3, 6-0, 6-2 win over the Russian teenager and grimaced as his right ankle half-turned.

As Murray played on, he repeatedly said to his support team in the stands: “Not good, it’s not good,” and for a moment he must have thought his quest for a first Australian Open title was in danger of being derailed.

Read more: Evans playing his way into a new wardrobe Down Under . . .

“Well, it was [worrying],” he said after having around an hour of ice treatment on the ankle. “I heard a few sort of little crackles and it was sore. It was throbbing for the rest of the match. I was moving fine on it, though. It was just sore.

“You're thinking about it because you have a little bit of pain when you're moving around and when you're moving into certain positions again on the court, you don't want to do the same movement again. But I was moving fine towards the end of the match.

Murray will assess the injury further today and he can request to start as late as possible, which would mean another evening session for his third-round encounter against Sam Querrey.

Querrey took out the then world No.1 Novak Djokovic at the same stage at Wimbledon and Murray knows full well the danger the American can pose.

“We haven't played for quite a while but he's obviously a dangerous player,” Murray said. “Big serve, goes for it and obviously had a big win a couple slams ago against Novak in the third round.”

Read more: Evans playing his way into a new wardrobe Down Under . . .

Until the injury and in fact, even after it, Murray was much more clinical than he had been in his opening-round win over Illya Marchenko of Ukraine.

Then Murray’s performance was a little scratchy; yesterday he moved well, hit the ball crisply and never allowed the 19-year-old to get a foothold in the match.

“I did pretty good tonight,” Murray said. “It was better than the first match. I was hitting the ball a bit cleaner. I was hitting through the court more and hitting more winners. I was able to get myself up to the net more. I served way better, too. That helps you and allows you to dictate more points. Second serve was harder than the other day. Most things were better tonight. But still think I can improve.”

Murray said the ankle supports, which he has worn almost as long as the 29-year-old has been on Tour, may well have saved him much more damage.

“The ankle supports do help in those situations,” he said. “Thankfully I haven't done that too often since I've been wearing them but they have helped me a couple of times. Pretty much every player plays with ankle taping or the ankle supports. Everyone has their taping normally under the socks. I feel like the ankle supports give me a little bit more mobility than the taping. But that's just my preference. Everyone has their own things that they like and dislike.”

Murray, the No.1 seed at a grand slam for the first time, will see how he wakes up today before deciding whether to put in his scheduling request.

“I’ve been icing it,” he said. “There's not a whole lot you can do apart from that just now. See in the morning how it feels when I wake up. But hopefully it will be all right. It's not too bad. It's all right. It's not too bad. Just a bit sore. I mean, I'll see how it feels when I get up in the morning. It can sometimes swell overnight. Just have to wait and see.”

Read more: Evans playing his way into a new wardrobe Down Under . . .

Murray said he would try to watch some of Querrey’s recent matches to get an insight but not the encounter at Wimbledon when he beat Djokovic. “I'll watch matches on hard courts,” he said. “If I'm playing a guy on grass, I'll try to watch matches of them playing on a grass court because it changes from surface to surface. So I wouldn't watch that.”

And Murray, five times the runner-up here, said he felt ready to begin moving through the gears.

“The first round was pretty challenging, I had some tough moments in that one,” he said. “I was down a break in the first two sets. It was a pretty long one in tough conditions.

“I played some pretty tough matches in Doha 10 days or so ago. I think I'll be ready in a couple of days.”