Andy Murray survived a five-set roller-coaster for the second successive match to scrape through to the third round of the French Open.

After coming from two sets down to defeat Radek Stepanek over two days in round one, Murray was back on court against little-known French wild card Mathias Bourgue.

Murray was expected to stroll through against the 22-year-old world No 164 but instead, from 6-2, 2-0 up, he lost 24 of the next 27 points and eight games in row, and found himself two sets to one down.

Staring at the worst defeat of his career, the world No 2 did what he invariably does in such situations and found a way back, eventually winning 6-2, 2-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, in three hours and 34 minutes.

Murray said: “He was excellent. He was the one dictating a lot of the points, making me run a lot and fighting right to the end. He’s going to have a fantastic future.

“I was thinking, ‘What happened?’ I had 6-2, 2-0, and then he started playing unbelievable and I was finding it hard to win points, not games.

“I’ve played these matches many times and I just tried to fight through to the end. It’s been a tough few days and I’m going to have to recover extremely well if I am to go far in this tournament. You can’t play too many matches like this.”

It is the first grand slam tournament in more than a decade in which Murray has played successive five-setters and the concern must be the toll it has taken both physically and mentally. The Scot may therefore be relieved to be facing Croatian Ivo Karlovic next so there are unlikely to be many long rallies.

Two of Murray’s compatriots bowed out with Kyle Edmund losing 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, to John Isner and Heather Watson going down 6-1, 6-3 to Svetlana Kuznetsova.