Andy Murray secures Eastbourne doubles partner but Feliciano Lopez match-fixing claims overshadow comeback

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Andy Murray will team up with former Wimbledon doubles champion Marcelo Melo at Eastbourne next week, as he ramps up his return to competitive tennis.

The Scot’s court comeback had been scheduled for Wednesday, but only the third washout in 18 years at Queen’s on Tuesday caused a 24-hour delay to him appearing with Feliciano Lopez at the Fever-Tree Championships.

The former world No1 had been on the look-out for a partner for Eastbourne and Brazilian Melo stepped in after cancelling his plans to take a break next week with his regular playing partner, Lukasz Kubot. Murray played doubles with Melo at the International Premier Tennis League in 2015.

Melo said: “Next week would be a break for us and then there was the opportunity to play Eastbourne with Andy Murray. I had the pleasure of playing with him during the IPTL and now we will be together again.”

With Melo and Kubot resuming their partnership at Wimbledon, Murray is still searching for a third doubles partner in as many tournaments.

Murray’s return to action has been overshadowed, however, after Lopez’s name cropped up as part of a match-fixing investigation surrounding a doubles match at Wimbledon in 2017.

But Lopez’s camp strenuously denied the allegations and admitted their surprise that his match with Marc Lopez against Australian duo John-Patrick Smith and Matt Reid was even being investigated. The Spanish pairing lost in four sets after Feliciano Lopez had pulled out of an earlier singles match injured. The allegations centre on former Spanish footballers Raul Bravo and Carlos Aranda, who were last month handed suspended prison sentences following a wider investigation into match-fixing in football.

The report in Spanish newspaper El Confidencia claimed that police got information from tapping Aranda’s phone in which the tip that “Feliciano Lopez and his partner will lose in the doubles” at Wimbledon was passed on. The pair duly lost their match

Feliciano Lopez was due to play Marton Fucsovics in the first match on Court 1 today in the singles and was later expected to address the allegations publicly.

Match-fixing claims: Feliciano Lopez
Getty Images

As for Murray, the attention surrounding Lopez is an unwanted sideshow to an already high-profile return to the court, where he and his partner face the No1 seeds, Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal.

Two wins would potentially set up a sibling semi-final against brother Jamie Murray and his new playing partner, Neal Skupski.

And the elder Murray said it was not beyond the realms of possibility that his brother could go all the way on his comeback.

“Could he win? Why not,” he said. “It’s doubles and the margins are so small. Would it surprise me if he won this tournament? Yeah, maybe a little, but I wouldn’t collapse from shock.

“I’m just excited to see how he’ll do. It’ll be cool to see him play.”

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