Australian Open 2018: Kyle Edmund on the extremes he reached against Nikoloz Basilashvili in Melbourne heat

British No 2 reaches the last 16 of the Australian Open but would not have been surprised if his victory over Basilashvili had been halted due to the 43C temperatures

Both players struggled to cope with the extreme heat in Melbourne (Getty)

Kyle Edmund looked and sounded like he had just wandered down the road to get a coffee rather than played a match for three and a half hours in 40C heat, but the 23-year-old Briton agreed that the conditions during his 7-6, 3-6, 4-6, 6-0, 7-5 victory over Georgia’s Nikoloz Basilashvili here on Friday had been demanding in the extreme.

“It was hot, man,” Edmund said after securing his place in the fourth round of the Australian Open for the first time. “It’s tough. There is no getting around it. For me, mentally, I just accepted that it was going to be tough today. It was like: ‘It’s going to be hot and physically you’re probably going to be feeling not your best.’ That’s just the way I approached it.

“It was tough out there. It drains your energy, saps the energy out of you. To repeat and repeat and repeat, it’s tough. The best way to do it, I find, is just to manage yourself. Of course in the fifth set it’s tough.”

After the match Edmund spent 10 minutes in an ice bath, stretched and tried to eat and drink as much as possible to aid his recovery. Two hours after the end of it he said his overriding feeling was tiredness.

“The body is just low on stuff,” Edmund said. “It's been out there for however long in heat. It’s just lost a lot of fluids, lost a lot of energy and nutrition. The quicker you can refuel that it’s better for the body. Sleep, as well, is really good for it. The next 48 hours will just be about recovery, looking after the body.”

Edmund said it was one of the hardest physical tests he had ever faced, although he had played longer matches in the past. “They were probably the hottest conditions I played in for that period of time,” he said.

He said he would “definitely have taken it” if the tournament director had wanted to stop the match because of the heat, but he had no complaints. “I’m sure there are black-and-white rules, but I’m a bit vague with them,” he said. “It’s a tough one. It’s a professional sport. It’s meant to hurt. It’s not meant to be easy.”

Asked about Andy Murray’s tweet, in which the Scot described Edmund’s win as the biggest of his career, the world No 49 said: “It’s definitely up there, for sure. It's really hard to know if it's the best win or not.

“For sure, the physical test was a great, great win for me to come through like that in a Grand Slam: [winning over the] best of five sets in that kind of heat is really good for my career and my confidence going forward, for sure.

“I think the fact that I was down like that and came through a lot of tough moments in the match is really good for me. I showed good character to come through that. I’ve played two five-set matches this week against two good players, so it’s pleasing for me.”

Edmund was confident that he would be able to recover in time for his fourth-round match on Sunday against Italy’s Andreas Seppi, who beat Ivo Karlovic 6-3, 7-6, 6-7 6-7 9-7 after a marathon contest that lasted nine minutes short of four hours.

Edmund is congratulated with Basilashvili following his victory (Getty)

“You’ve got a day off,” Edmund said. “It’s normal tennis. That’s why we train every day, because you need accumulation of hours - not just one off-day or one off-match. It’s hours and hours of day after day. I’m pretty confident. I’ll have two sleeps until the match. I guess the beauty of Grand Slams is you get that day off.”

Edmund won his only previous meeting with 32-year-old Seppi, the current world No 76, in Antwerp two years ago, but is expecting a tough match.

“He’s also going to be feeling good and feeling good about his game, like myself,” Edmund said. “At the end of the day, it’s 0-0. It’s a fresh match. It doesn’t really matter about head-to-heads or what the number is in the bracket next to his name. It makes no difference. As you have seen in this tournament, there are a lot of seeds that have gone out.

“It has to be a new challenge for me and I need to get all that out of my head. I have to be ready for a battle. That’s the way I look at it.