Sumit Nagal ran out of steam to lose to China’s Shang Juncheng 6-2, 3-6, 5-7, 4-6 in the second round of the Australian Open on Thursday.

The 26-year-old started brightly, taking the first set with a canter in 40 minutes, before the 18-year-old from China upped the ante and won the war in 2 hours and 50 minutes. The Chinese player will take on Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz in the third round.

The Chinese player, who was handed a wild card into the tournament, raised his level visibly after dropping the first set. After making 17 unforced errors in the first set, he drastically reduced his errors. His service also got better, and he was leading 5-2 with two breaks in the second game.

So clinical was the Chinese after dropping the first set that Nagal saw just one break point in the last three sets.

The India No 1 player had made history by making it to the second round after defeating straight sets to advance into the second round of the Australian Open. Nagal had brought down 27th seed Alexander Bublik 6-4, 6-2, 7-6 (5) in the first round of the Australian Open, which had made him the first Indian since Ramesh Krishnan in 1989 to beat a seeded player in the singles main draw of a Grand Slam.

Despite the defeat in round 2, by courtesy of the round 1 victory, the 26-year-old walks away with Aus$180,000 (around Rs 98 lakh) in prize money.

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Nagal, who is the top-ranked Indian singles player, had defeated Slovakia’s Alex Molcan in the final qualifying match to make it to the main round. He had not dropped a single set in three matches of qualifying to reach the main draw: the fourth time in his career that he was featuring in the main draw at a Grand Slam.

For much of last year, Nagal was ranked outside the top 500 due to a series of injuries. But he recovered to prop up his ranking to world no 122.