Murray thru', Maria falls

Canada's Eugenie Bouchard pumps her fists in celebration of her victory over Serbia's Ana Ivanovic in the second round of Wimbledon yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

Andy Murray emerged unscathed on a day of astonishing injury mayhem at Wimbledon as the world number two eased into the third round with a 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 win over Taiwan's Lu Yen-Hsun.
Murray was never threatened by Lu's lightweight game and the US Open champion breezed through in two hours, in the process avenging an embarrassing defeat against the world number 75 at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
While Murray would never admit it publicly, he would also have been pleased with the news from the Wimbledon treatment table, with French sixth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Croatian 10th seed Marin Cilic among the victims of an incredible run of injury withdrawals on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, third seed and 2004 champion Maria Sharapova crashed out of Wimbledon, losing 6-3, 6-4 in the second round to Portuguese qualifier Michelle Larcher De Brito, the world number 131.
Sharapova's defeat came just hours after second seed Victoria Azarenka withdrew from the tournament with a knee injury.
But it was a controversial exit for Sharapova who twice slipped and fell on Court Two.
She needed a medical timeout to treat her left hip after the eighth game of the second set and complained to the umpire that the surface was dangerous.
Larcher De Brito had hit the headlines in 2009 when, as a precocious 16-year-old, she was widely-criticised for her on-court grunting which some rivals condemned as unsporting.
The controversy did her career little good as she virtually disappeared off the radar and her ranking slumped.
But honing the skills and screams she perfected at the same Bollettieri academy home of Sharapova, she capitalised on her famous rival's obvious discomfort at having to play on Court Two.
The Russian pleaded that the conditions were too treacherous but the match continued.
"I saw how she fell pretty hard and I know these grass courts can be really slippery and can be quite dangerous," said Larcher De Brito, who took victory on a fifth match point.
"There's a lot of grass that's been cut that didn't get swept off so there's a lot of dead grass on the top and it made it quite slippery."
Larcher De Brito goes on to face Karin Knapp of Italy for a place in the last 16.