Britain's Sir Andy, a three-time Grand Slam winner, played the longest match of his career in coming from two sets down to beat Australia's Thanasi Kokkinakis 4-6, 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 7-5 in his men's singles second-round match.

The match lasted five hours and 45 minutes, and finished at 4.05am local time.

Only home favourite Lleyton Hewitt's third-round match against Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis in 2008 had a later finish at the Australian Open, with match point coming at 4.34am local time.

Sir Andy vented his frustration at the "disrespectful" rule that prevented him from going to the toilet after the fourth set at "f***ing four in the morning".

After the match, he questioned the late finish to play at Melbourne Park.

"I don’t know who it’s beneficial for," the 35-year-old said.

"We come here after the match and that’s what the discussion is, rather than it being like, 'epic Murray-Kokkinakis match'.

"It ends in a bit of a farce."

He said that it was "not beneficial" for players, umpires, officials, ball kids and fans.

"If my child was a ball kid for a tournament and they’re coming home at five in the morning, as a parent, I’m snapping at that," the two-time Olympic champion insisted.

Czech-American three-time Australian Open winner and 18-time Grand Slam champion Martina Navratilova urged Tennis Australia and the International Tennis Federation to reconsider the timing of matches.

"It is essential we create better rules in tennis regarding the weather (light and wind) and starting times or cut-off times for matches," she wrote on Twitter.

"Murray and Kokkinakis will finish around 4am.

"Crazy - no other sport does this."

However, Tiley resisted calls to adjust the schedule, insisting yesterday's match represents an extreme example.

"At this point there is no need to alter the schedule," he told Australia's Channel Nine.

"We always look at it when we do the debrief like we do every year.

"At this point we’ve got to fit the matches in the 14 days.

"You don’t have many options.

"It was an epic match and when you schedule a match like that just before 10 in the evening, you’re not expecting it to go close to six hours.

"When you have 25 sessions, two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people coming through the gate, all the best players - 500 of them - in the world here, you’re going to have those moments."

Extreme weather disrupted play at Melbourne Park earlier this week, and Tiley explained the impact that had on the schedule.

"Over the last few days we have had extreme heat, we’ve had over five breaks of rain, we've had cold," he said.

"It's Melbourne, but we don't often get those conditions in such a short period of time.

"Generally a women’s match is about an hour-and-a-half and a men’s match a little over two-and-a-half hours - that’s the length of match you work your schedule around.

"But you are always going to have an out of the box situation where like last night it goes extra long unexpectedly."

Tiley told Australian newspaper The Age that "if the players wanted to have a cut-off time, we would absolutely be open to it", but claimed that "if they can play, they want to play".

In tennis' other Grand Slams, play can continue late at the French Open and US Open, but Wimbledon implements a strict curfew of 11pm local time because of local restrictions.