A national power outage stopped play at the Madrid Open, with Britain’s Jacob Fearnley among those forced off court.

Fearnley had saved a match point in his third-round encounter against Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov and was about to serve to stay in the match at 6-4 5-4 down when play was suspended on the main court.

The power cut meant the electronic line-calling system – which has replaced line judges – and scoreboards stopped working.

After a brief delay the umpire announced play would restart, with him making line calls in place of the system.

However, the spider camera which hangs low over the court had become stuck in place and was in the player’s eyelines.

After further discussion the umpire led the players back to the locker room.