Emma Raducanu in tears after just two games en route to Dubai defeat

Emma Raducanu fought bravely through a fit of tears and apparent breathing difficulties but could not avoid a 7-6, 6-4 defeat to Karolina Muchova in Dubai.

On Sunday, Raducanu had snapped a four-match losing streak in the previous round by beating Maria Sakkari, beginning to justify her third consecutive wildcard appearance in the Middle East.

But the 22-year-old could not overcome former French Open finalist Muchova, ranked 17 in the world, in a late-night encounter that was delayed by hours after a rare day of rain in Dubai.

Raducanu would have moved to within one win of a return to the world’s top 50 with victory over the Czech, but is now expected to head back to the UK to train ahead of Masters tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami.

Riding the Raducanu rollercoaster is a regular occurrence on tour. Few matches pass without incident, although her first-round win over Sakkari was as close to a routine victory as the British No 2 gets, reinforcing her dominant head-to-head record over the Greek whom she has now beaten three times.

This time, the drama began before the first ball was even hit, as her match was delayed by four hours when Dubai was hit by rain – a rarity that happens just 25 days a year in the desert city. When it appeared to stop, Raducanu and Muchova got as far as warming up to start, but just as the Czech was ready to serve in the opening game, droplets began to fall again.

The baffling thing was that only 30 yards away, Coco Gauff and McCartney Kessler were playing through the drizzle, while Raducanu and Muchova sat in their chairs and watched tournament staff drag towels along the painted lines with their feet, somehow still the most technologically advanced way to dry a tennis court.

Eventually they did get going – close to 10pm local time, having expected to start in the late afternoon. Iga Swiatek, who played a little earlier, said she had warmed up four times during the rain delay and was glad her match was over in just 75 minutes. You can imagine Raducanu had gone through a similar rigmarole, and she even had to go through the on-court warm-up twice.

It was reminiscent of her breakthrough, before even the US Open title, at Wimbledon, when a day of rain in London delayed her fourth-round match with Ajla Tomljanovic until 8pm.

Court 2 in Dubai, with its single stand at the end of the court, is not No 1 Court at SW19 (capacity just over 12,000), but the build-up to this match was similarly disrupted and you could not help but think of that difficult night four years ago when, after just two games in the UAE, Raducanu seemed to be struggling with her breathing again after just two games. Having been broken at the first opportunity, she appeared convulsing as she spoke to the umpire and then emerged from behind the chair in floods of tears.

You immediately feared that another retirement, which would ahve been the 13th of Raducanu’s career, might be coming, but to her credit she walked back out for the third game and, bit by bit, worked her way back into the match. Every sit-down was a valuable 90-second session of composure, focusing on her breathing under a towel. It helped her rally from 4-0 down to force a first-set tie-break against Muchova, a notoriously tricky opponent with the full range of shots and an enviable grand slam record, having reached at least the last eight on six different occasions.

Raducanu had won her last six tie-breaks in a row, a record that suggested she might be able to complete the comeback in which she had trailed throughout, but she let a 5-2 lead slip to drop the opener exactly as the clock ticked round to 11pm local time.

The 22-year-old is a self-confessed “night owl”, but would still not have expected to be playing at close to midnight – and would have to go into the early hours if she wanted to pick up what would have been the fifth-best win of her career by ranking.

It was perhaps a prospect too grim given the ups and downs of the day, and she was soon broken in the second set with Muchova in less generous mood than she had been in the opener, eventually serving it out after two hours and seven minutes.