Britain's Dan Evans beats Marin Cilic at Australian Open

Dan Evans produced a stunning upset in the second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday, beating seventh seed Marin Cilic in four sets.

The British No 2 looked out of sorts for much of the first hour of the match but showed why he is set to rise into the world's top 50 as he came back from a set and a break down to prevail 3-6 7-5 6-3 6-3 and reach the last 32 in Melbourne for the first time.

Victory for Evans added to his maiden top-10 scalp, which came last week when he beat Dominic Thiem on his way to the final of the Sydney International.

Cilic broke Evans in the world No 51's first service game and strolled 4-1 ahead, easing into a one-set lead on his first set-point in the ninth game.

Evans dropped his serve again in the fifth game of the second set, but from that point on, he appeared a player inspired against the 2014 US Open champion from Croatia.

He broke back straight away to level the set at 3-3 and, with his opponent's error count starting to rise, levelled the match with a second break to avoid the need for a tiebreak.

Cilic started to lose his rhythm in the third set, dropping his normally reliable serve again to trail 3-1 and Evans was able to serve the set out to move to the brink of victory.

Evans' biggest hold came in the second game of the fourth set, when he staved off eight break points to level the set at 1-1 in a game that seemed to go on for an eternity.

There followed three successive service breaks, Evans claiming two of them to take a 4-2 lead and then securing a place in the third round with a further break in the final game of a topsy-turvy encounter.

Speaking after the match, the Briton was clearly delighted with his performance:

"It's definitely the biggest win of my career.

"It's a proper win. Last week was three sets against Thiem. Five sets is the ultimate test, I think. It was really good. I think I played as well as I can play today."

Evans' underdog triumph seemed far from secure when Cilic saved two of three match points, dredging up uncomfortable memories for the Briton, who admits he was haunted by last year's US Open, during which he failed to convert match point against Stan Wawrinka.

"I still thought about that on the court today. It's not easy when you had the opportunity to sort of close out the big match and then lose.

"I thought about it at 40-30, last game, last match point. I didn't want to go down the other end, sit down and serve for it.

"I didn't think I did much wrong actually in the two match points but I was pretty pleased when he netted the forehand."

He will next face Australia's 27th seed Bernard Tomic, whose father once claimed the British No 2 wasn't good enough to practise with his son.

"I'm not going to bother saying anything about that again," Evans said, brushing the issue aside. "He confronted me about that. We'll leave it at that."

The world No 51 and home crowd favourite have on-court history, too; Evans beat Tomic at the 2013 US Open, and took him to four close sets in a Davis Cup tie in 2015.

"I think it's just sort of fresh when we play each other," the Briton believe. "I'd say it's a 50-50 match."

Andy Murray, ever-supportive of his compatriots, is well aware of Evans' stellar trajectory:

"I saw quite a lot of Dan's match," Murray said.

"I'm really happy for him because he's a nice, nice guy. He's talented. He does work hard. He competes well. Once you get him on the match court, he competes really hard.

"People mature at different ages, they find what's important for them at different ages, too. I think now he's pretty focused on his tennis. With the right people around him, he's doing really well."

Follow updates from Andy Murray and Dan Evans' matches at the 2017 Australian Open through our blog on skysports.com/tennis, our app for mobile devices and iPad or our Twitter account @skysportstennis.

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