Renshaw began the stage 38th overall and moved himself into 18th courtesy of his fourth placing in the bunch sprint to the finish, but one of those who beat him was race leader Tom Boonen who now has a 25 second advantage overall.

It was the second sprint finish of the Tour, the first of which saw Boonen win with Renshaw in sixth.

This time around it was an old friend who spoiled the party for the Bathurst rider, his former HTC Highroad team-mate Mark Cavendish pipping Boonen on the line to take his first stage win with Team Sky.

The 146.5 kilometre stage, which finished at Doha’s Al Gharafa stadium, came to life in the last 30km when Garmin-Barracuda split-up the field in the crosswinds. Their numerical advantage and strength saw Liquigas’s Peter Sagan distanced but several other teams, including Omega and Renshaw’s Rabobank, were well-represented.

Within 10km the 35-strong leading pack had opened up a decisive gap of 55 seconds between them and the rest of the peloton.

In the final kilometre it looked as though Cavendish had been boxed in, but he jumped onto Boonen’s wheel at the vital time and had enough power left to come through and take the win.

It had looked for a few seconds as if Boonen had done enough for another victory but he was collared by Cavendish in the shadow of the winning line.

Cavendish’s victory pulled him up to third in the overall standings, behind Boonen and American Tyler Farrar.

Boonen and Cavendish occupy the top two spots respectively in the sprint points classification also, with Renshaw fourth and showing that he can mix it with the best, but the big test will be whether he can not only match them but outdo them.

“The team are riding very well. Both the Maartens [Maarten Wynants and Maarten Tjallingii] did a good job today helping me stay out of trouble. Thanks guys!” Renshaw posted to his Twitter account after the stage, but he expressed disappointment over his final surge.

“Not very happy with my sprint today. I needed better positioning to challenge the guys. Congrats to Mark Cavendish. Nice win in world champion jersey.”