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.

“Well, it was [worrying],” he said after having about 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 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.”

Until the injury and even after it, Murray was much more clinical than 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. 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. I feel like the ankle supports give me a little bit more mobility than the taping.”

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. I’ll see how it feels when I get up in the morning. It can sometimes swell overnight. Just have to wait and see.”