London July 4 (IANS) India s Purav Raja and his French partner Fabrice Martin lost a hard fought five-set battle to crash out of the men s doubles competition at the Wimbledon tennis tournament here on Wednesday.
Up against Dušan Lajovic of Serbia and Bosnia s Mirza Bašic in the first round the Indo-French combination lost 2-6 4-6 7-6 6-4 9-11 in a mammoth encounter which lasted three hours and 37 minutes.
Lajovic and Bašic will next meet the winner of the first round contest between Nikola Mektic of Croatia and Austria s Alexander Peya and the Canadian-Austrian team of Daniel Nestor and Jurgen Melzer.

--IANS ajb/vm