• Ricardas Berankis beats James Ward 7-6, 6-3, 6-4
• Dan Evans faces crucial match against Laurynas Grigelis

Britain’s hopes of avoiding their most embarrassing Davis Cup defeat will rest on the teenager Dan Evans after James Ward’s 7-6, 6-3, 6-4 defeat by the Lithuanian No1 Ricardas Berankis in today’s first singles rubber.

On Friday Ward became the first British player in 13 years other than Tim Henman, Greg Rusedski or Andy Murray to win a live singles rubber when he beat Laurynas Grigelis. Evans then lost in five sets to Berankis but Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski won yesterday’s doubles match to put John Lloyd’s team in the driving seat going into the final day.

After the first day’s performances, hopes were high that Ward may be able to upset Berankis, who is a former world junior No1 and, at 198, ranked substantially higher than either of Britain’s representatives.

Both players held serve fairly comfortably throughout the first set but Ward cracked first in the tie-break, three errors in a row from 4-4 handing the advantage to his opponent.

The pressure was slowly building on the British No3 and the first break of the match duly came in the eighth game of the second set. Ward had two chances to break back immediately but he could not take them and Berankis, 19, served out for a two-set lead.

Both players had their openings in what proved to be the final set but again it was the Lithuanian who broke through, in the seventh game, and this time he had no trouble clinching victory to draw his country level at 2-2.

Defeat for Britain in Vilnius would be a new low, against a country with only three world-ranked singles players and whose team is made up entirely of teenagers.

Evans should come out on top against Grigelis, who is ranked 269 places below him at 521 in the world and is playing for the third consecutive day, but the Davis Cup record of the 19-year-old from Birmingham currently reads played three, lost three, and, when the pressure was on in the deciding rubber against Poland last year, he failed to win a set.

Elsewhere, the defending champions Spain advanced to the quarter-finals with victory over Switzerland.

The home side took a 2-1 lead into today’s reverse singles and David Ferrer quickly wrapped up the tie with an easy win over Stanislas Wawrinka.

Ferrer, who also won his first singles match on Friday, won 6-2, 6-4, 6-0 to set up a quarter-final with France, who had already taken an unassailable 3-0 lead against Germany in Toulon yesterday.

Two other ties had also been decided with a day to spare, the Czech Republic taking a 3-0 lead over Belgium without dropping a set and Croatia beating Ecuador by the same score. Russia completed a 4-1 victory over India, with Mikhail Youzhny claiming the decisive point courtesy of a 6-2, 6-1, 6-3 win over Somdev Devvarman in Moscow.