Andy Murray admitted he was blown off course by winds of up to 40mph as he crashed to a 6-1, 6-2 defeat against Rafael Nadal in the final of the Indian Wells Masters.

The British No1 was broken twice in each set as Nadal coped much better with the conditions last night to ease to his second title of the year following January's Australian Open success.

Murray said: "Rafa definitely deserved to win. He played great in difficult conditions.

"I haven't played in wind like that for quite a long time. Rafa hit the ball cleaner and just seemed to get himself in better positions than I did. You don't necessarily want to be doing a whole lot of defending and running.

"You want to be in the best position possible to hit each ball, and I wasn't. That's why he managed to dictate most of the points."

Despite the defeat there were some consolations for Murray - a third ATP Tour final of the season after victories in Doha and Rotterdam, plenty of ranking points to keep up the pressure on world No3 Novak Djokovic and an impressive overall comeback following his lay-off with a virus.

Murray said: "I've had a great start to the year and hopefully I can keep it going. I got a lot of matches here that I wasn't necessarily expecting, so going into the Masters Series event in Miami I'm going to be better prepared than I thought.

"Today was not my best day but I'll definitely get over it because I'm guessing I'm not going to play in those conditions each week."

Murray went into the match on a high after another victory over Roger Federer in the semi-finals but he was on the back foot from the off.

He held on to his opening service game but from then on the first set slipped away quickly as the world No1 reeled off five games in a row.

Murray seemed content to trade baseline shots with Nadal but could not match the Spaniard's consistency.

In the second set he tried coming into the net on a number of occasions but the wind made volleying difficult. He kept pace with Nadal at the start of the set but a break in the fifth game sealed his fate as the top seed cruised to his 13th Masters Series title.

Nadal said: "I played a really complete match. I was moving very well, I never stopped the legs during the whole match, and I think that was the key."