Emma Raducanu returns to Wimbledon: Live score and game-by-game updates from Centre Court as former US Open champion faces lucky loser Renata Zarazua

Centre Court is filling up, and with that comes the turning up of the home’s support volume. After watching her struggle for focus on her serve, the crowd are hungry for a break.

Save one mistep, Raducanu powers to 40-15 when Zarazua fumbled into the net at close range, and with a final backhand from the baseline, she can only do so again.

Raducanu has the first break of the match, and will only look for greater dominance.

After a series of lovely backhands at the net, Zarazua gets lucky and one snares the cord to leap over Raducanu’s head and land beyond her for a bashful opening point.

Raducanu’s retort is to push her back to the baseline and fire at her until she blinks, which Zarazua does with a shaky forehand which flies out as she runs up the court.

After hitting too long to make it 30-all, Raducanu lets out a long cry of relief after Zarazua does the same, moments after being spurred on with cries of ‘come on, Emma!’ from the crowd.

At 40-all, after another mishit, Zarazua wins the advantage, on the brink of the match’s first break. After a barnstorming serve, Raducanu smacks a backhand across court which is called out – only for the Briton to call in HawkEve. And it’s in! By a whisker.

Raducanu’s advatage comes with a powerfully struck winner at the net, and another fist-bump. Again looking frightening as she switches between crosscourt forehands and backhands, Raducanu holds when Zarazua hits long.

Nervy, but she got her hold in the end.

Growing in confidence, Zarazua lures Raducanu up the court, before sending an ungettable winning streaming past her backhand to reach game point.

Raducanu at the net tries to smack her own winner past an on-rushing Zarazua, but her forehand goes a hair too long. Another early hold for the Wimbledon debutant.

It’s Zarazua who claims the longest rally of the match so far, as Raducanu whisks her across the baseline, the Mexican looks composed and capable. In the end, she outfoxes the 21-year-old with a teasing dropshot which Raducanu attempts to tap over at close range with equal levity – only to find the net.

She then has pin-point accuracy to claim 15-30, with Raducanu only able to watch her winner floating over the top of her visor… and land squarely in, instead of out.

With a fist bump, Raducanu’s back all square at 30-all after push Zarazua back to the baseline, and for the second point in a row, the Mexican’s shot fails to clear the net-cord, for 40-30.

After a testing start to the game, Raducanu’s hold is a straightforward one, after a flurry of good-looking forehands.

Zarazua’s opening serve is soft-balled, and it takes very little indeed for the former champion to smack a down-the-line forehand winner skipping past the lucky loser.

The debutant climbs onto the board when that forehand looks shakier and goes long on the second point, and gets both feet on the ground after failing to fall for Raducanu’s dropshot ploy, which ends up with the Briton’s backhand finding the net.

Neither player looks settled from the off, and but at 40-30, a spinning sliced backhand allows Zarazua to hold. Deep breaths. First test passed.

She’s opted to receive, as the players complete their final warm-ups while the fractious crowd settles.

British summertime is temporarily on hiatus as the rain has held off but the sun is firmly behind the clouds and there’s the note of a chill in the air.

Both players walk onto the court to ringing applause from the scattered crowds, and they’re warming up now.

We’ll be underway in just about three minutes.

The 21-year-old’s run-up a year after missing out on the competition altogether has been a promising one. After struggling to get to grips with clay, Raducanu reached the semi-finals on grass at Nottingham before a narrow defeat to eventual winner Katie Boulter, and the quarters at Eastbourne against Daria Kasatkina – who also went on to win the title on the south coast.

She also claimed the biggest scalp of her career, beating world No5 Jessica Pegula in her first (ever!) win against a top-10 player.

A comfortable way to start a competition where Raducanu would like expectations to be kept manageably low.

Hello and welcome to Centre Court, where we are poised and ready for the first British hope to step onto the hallowed turf – Emma Raducanu, up in just a few minutes time for her first-round tie with Renata Zarazua.

Without having hit a tennis ball, Raducanu’s morning has – at least on the surface – appeared charmed. First came news that the former British No1’s opponent Ekaterina Alexandrova had withdrawn due to illness, setting up a tie with a lucky loser ranked 98th in the world.

Then, another spell of possible good fortune, with the disappointing withdrawal of world No3 Aryna Sabalenka. The Belarusian has been struggling with a rare shoulder injury, and found her final practice session on Monday morning too much to take.

Sabalenka was possibly the biggest pitfall awaiting Raducanu in what now looks like a very open section of the draw indeed. That is, if Raducanu can pass her first test, on the biggest stage of all.

Play has just wrapped up between defending men’s champion Carlos Alcaraz and Mark Lajal, with the Spaniard winning in a not-as-straight-forward-as-it-first-appears straight sets victory against the Estonian qualifier.