The blazers at the All England Club were hoping that Andy Murray’s criticism of their £80 million roof was no more than a player looking for an excuse. The man of the hour complained that the “very, very heavy and very humid” atmosphere meant that his serve wasn’t coming off the strings quickly.

But as he prepared for his quarter-final against Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain, science backed up Murray’s claims that the roof radically altered playing conditions in the clinical, air-conditioned Centre Court. He also said that he had been sweating more than usual as he struggled to beat Stanislas Wawrinka, an unfancied player from Switzerland, over five sets.

Wimbledon officials were quick to defend their massive investment in a retractable roof that overnight became one of the modern marvels of sport. More than 1,000 tonnes of steel and translucent fabric were cranked into place on Monday afternoon and left for Murray’s match after the Met Office warned that there was a 70 per cent chance of thundery showers.

“If they had been playing with the roof open, it would have been hot and humid,” said Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the All England Club, which owns Wimbledon. “I think we will look at whether there is something we could have done differently, but as far as I am concerned I would rather focus on an unbelievable match.”

The club said that the Centre Court temperature was 24C throughout the match, much cooler than the record heat outside, while humidity was a stable 50 per cent, lower than outside.

But Steve Haake of Sheffield Hallam University’s department of sports engineering, a consultant to the International Tennis Federation, said: “Andy has a point. When you play outside, there is usually a breeze of some sort, no matter how hot it is. That is a version of what the weather men call the wind chill factor, helping sweat to evaporate. You don’t get that in a carefully controlled environment where the air is not moving and the sweat has nowhere to go.”

Professor Haake calculates that the cooler air on court probably slowed Murray’s serve by at least 1mph, possibly more, giving Wawrinka an extra 5/100ths of a second to react.

David Felgate, a coach to Tim Henman, said that Murray might have needed more time to change the tension of the strings in his rackets. “With more notice, he might have had two or three rackets set at different tensions for the cooler conditions.”

Professor Haake said that Murray’s finely honed instincts meant that he probably detected even minute changes in racket and ball performance. “We have conducted blind tests on top tennis players and they can tell immediately even the smallest changes to rackets and strings,” he said. “The problem here is not that Murray or the All England Club are wrong. They are both right and it is perceptions that are proving to be the difficulty.”