Henman (Gbr) bt Dosedal (Cze) 6-7 (4/7), 5-7, 6-1, 7-5, 6-3

Tim Henman came back from the dead to give Great Britain a winning start in their Davis Cup tie in Ostrava.

The Briton was two sets down and heading for a disastrous start to the away tie, but recovered to win his first match from such a position.

Henman stormed back to take the third comfortably, got two crucial breaks at the end of the fourth and then wrapped up the decider after four hours and 21 minutes.

Britain needed Henman to win this opening rubber, with the inexperienced Jamie Delgado playing Czech no 1 Jiri Novak later on Friday.

This opening rubber started well enough for the British no 1 as an early break gave him a 4-2 advantage in the opening set.

But Dosedel battled back to take the set to a tie-break, which he won after 70 minutes of play.

Henman had made 20 unforced errors in that set alone, and did not significantly improve during the second set as the Czech got the crucial first break in the 12th game to take it 7-5.

Briton's world no 10 looked completely out of sorts on his least favourite surface of slow clay and Czech no 2 Dosedel seemed set to complete a comfortable win.

But the Briton left the court for a "comfort break" and came back a different player, immediately taking for a 2-0 lead in the third before crucially hanging on through his own service game for 3-1.

After that Henman took control, breaking the Czech's next two games to take the set 6-1.

But Dosedel was not finished and at 4-4 in the fourth, he broke Henman to give himself a chance to serve for the match.

It was not taken as Henman hurtled to 0-40 on the Czech's serve, and then returned a second serve with interest to break break and square the fourth set at 5-5.

Dosedel was broken again in his next service game as Henman squared the match at 2-2.

Like the whole match, the decider was a tense affair, with Henman mindful of his five-set Australian Open exit last month.

But he made the crucial breakthrough to give himself a 5-3 lead, before serving out the game despite a brief scare at 30-30.

Afterwards Henman revealed details of a mid-match chat with team-mate Delgado during his mid-match rush off court.

"I went to the loo and Jamie was in there. I just said to him `there's a long way to go' - and I was right," he told BBC Two viewers.

"It was my first match on clay for a long time but I felt like I was playing all right.

"I was serving really well, I was hitting the ball well from the baseline and I think he just played better than me in the first two sets. You've just got to stick in there and keep making him play shots."

Away support

Henman paid tribute to the British supporters in the crowd who helped roar him to victory.

"It's the first time we've played away for a couple of years, but the crowd were great. They really got behind me and played a big part in the win."

Henman then backed Delgado to put up a good performance against Novak.

"I've told Jamie to go out there and enjoy it. It's a great atmosphere, he's got nothing to lose and there should be no expectations of him.

"He's playing a guy who's ranked a lot higher than him but he should go out there and really go for it. He's got a good chance."