Andy Murray and Joe Salisbury through to Olympic quarter-finals

Andy Murray and Joe Salisbury have advanced to the quarter-finals of the men’s doubles in Tokyo.

The Scot and his partner continued their good form with a 6-2 7-6 (7-2) win over German duo Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz.

The win continues Murray’s hopes of becoming the first British man to win four Olympic tennis medals. He won gold in the singles at London 2012 and Rio 2016, as well as a silver in the mixed doubles nine years ago.

The 34-year-old had been advised to withdraw from both the singles and doubles events in Tokyo after he suffered a minor thigh strain after his opening match. He withdrew from the singles event but decided to to focus on continuing in the doubles alongside two-time grand slam winner Salisbury.

“It felt fine [today],” he said after his match. “It hasn’t really affected me at all in the two matches that I’ve played.

“It was very disappointing because I prepared well, was feeling good again and then just had something showing up on the scans that we weren’t too happy with.

“When we spoke about playing, I told Joe if I had any physical issues that I’d prioritise the doubles over singles, that’s why I made the decision to stick just with the doubles.

“I would have been annoyed with myself if I’d taken the decision to play with the issue that I had, made it worse, lost my singles and then not been able to perform well in the doubles. I think physically I’ll be OK for the rest of the tournament but I’ll need to take a break afterwards.”

The Scot also revealed how he had been spending time away from the court – competing with British team-mates to collect pins from the other competing nations.

He said: “It’s a bit of a competition but we haven’t really been given that many pins to exchange so I’ve been trying to do pins for selfies to gain a bit of an edge.

“It’s good fun. You end up meeting some really interesting people. I met two Syrian brothers, one who’s competing for Syria, one who’s competing for the refugee team. You meet people from all different backgrounds and that’s one of the things I love about this competition.”

Murray and Salisbury will play either America’s Rajeev Ram and Frances Tiafoe or Marin Cilic and Ivan Dodig of Croatia in the next round.