Which Daniel would feel less brutalised by the talons of lionised opponents was among the most vital questions to be answered on the opening day of Great Britain’s first round Davis Cup tie against Japan.

Both ties were mismatches in terms of world rankings, but they offered an opportunity to the lower ranked pair who face the prospect of facing one another in a decider depending on the result of the doubles, always a bit less predictable and the meeting of their team leaders in which Andy Murray is inevitably a strong favourite, but ahead of which Kei Nishikori has the benefit of more recent match practise.

In that context, then, in cutting a rather bewildered figure on leaving the court, poor Taro Daniel - a hero in September when winning the decisive match in the World Group play-off against Colombia which earned his team this trip - looked as if a couple of days might not be enough to recover from the emotional scarring inflicted by knowing that, as he acknowledged afterwards, the rampant Scot had not so much mauled him as toyed with him.

One last lazy looking swing of the right arm and his sporting kill complete, an ace rounding off one of the most comfortable wins he has claimed in compiling a staggering singles record in this competition, Murray prepared the way for the other Daniel, noting that Evans had won his only previous meeting with Kei Nishikori before reminding the audience that the Japanese number one was entering a den occupied by a native Brummie.

Called into action as a result of a back injury suffered by Kyle Edmund it looked like Evans, too, might be overwhelmed by the occasion when he gifted the opening point to Nishikori with a double fault. However he won the next with a service winner, took that game and contested the early part of the set vigorously before losing it 6-3.

There was even more encouragement to be taken from the next set, not least because of the contrast with the previous match.

A second set Murray break in what ‘voice of tennis’ Dan Maskell used to term ‘the vital seventh’, had drawn the last of his opponent’s resolve, Daniel winning just one game thereafter and the disappointment of failing to break having been 0-40 up at three games all, could have similarly sickened Evans.

Instead he held twice more and further demonstrated his competitiveness by saving two set points in his next service game before eventually losing it.

With no real chance of winning the match from that point he could have been forgiven for subconsciously favouring energy conservation with an eye on the deciding day’s reverse singles, all the moreso when he was broken in the second game of the third set.

However he broke back immediately, levelled by holding serve, then broke a second time in ensuring that Nishikori did not leave the arena unscathed, aware as he had to be of the influence another increasingly noisy British home crowd can impose on both sides of the net.

Once again Evans might have crumbled on losing a long ensuing service game, but instead he broke for a third successive time before his opponent finally reasserted himself, going on to clinch the match in a tie break – 6-3, 7-5, 7-6.

Leon Smith, his team captain, said afterwards that it was a performance which will offer encouragement for Evans should he be required to play a deciding rubber, a message that should be reinforced by Nishikori’s view that he had played well.

On the first day’s evidence he is fully capable of converting a performance into a result against an opponent who may not be of Nishikori’s standard but is still ranked 70 places above him and Evans took the chance to reciprocate in praising his captain’s contribution when asked specifically if he believed that too.

“I think so,” said the world no.157.

“It’s just going out there and playing my game. That’s all Leon asks, it’s all the rest of the team ask. Every time we leave the changing room the last thing Leon says is just ‘do your best’ and that’s pretty much the motto of the team. There’s no pressure on anyone to do anything special. We just work hard for each other.”