England had no response to Mahendra Singh Dhoni's powerful hitting on the way to a chastening 126-run defeat by India in yesterday's first one-day international at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium.

Dhoni (87 not out) and Suresh Raina (55) transformed India's innings after they had initially struggled after choosing to bat, the hosts eventually piling up a daunting 300 for seven.

England, who have only twice won chasing 300 or more, were given a good start by their captain Alastair Cook (60), but his team-mates came up worryingly short.

Five wickets fell for only 23 runs, starting with Cook's, to leave England 134 for seven in the 29th over.

On a slow surface six wickets were shared between left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja and off-spinner R Ashwin in the first game of a hectic five-match series.

India's top order had also found it hard to get going on a pitch which appeared to favour containing bowlers over attacking batsmen.

But Dhoni and Raina became sufficiently attuned to conditions to cash in with 59 runs for the loss of one wicket in a late batting powerplay, gathering enough momentum for India to blast 92 off the last ten overs.

Without a limited-overs series win here since 1984/85, England are out to follow up their 3-0 victory over the same opponents on home turf in last month's NatWest Series.

But they did not help themselves by bowling 12 wides and Dhoni, Raina and Jadeja hit 16 fours and five sixes between them.

Jonathan Trott put down a regulation early chance at second slip off Steven Finn to spare opener Ajinkya Rahane on nought.

But Finn's endeavour, and some good fortune, brought England an early wicket anyway when Rahane drove firmly back to the bowler, who stooped to deflect the ball on to the stumps with Parthiv Patel out of his ground.

Gautam Gambhir hinted at fluency, but the opposite was true of Rahane, who spent 41 balls over his 15.

Graeme Swann, getting an earlier bowl than previously thanks to new playing conditions which delay the second powerplay, pulled off his old party trick of a wicket in his first over to put Rahane out of his misery.

He drew the diminutive opener out of his ground and beat him on the outside for Craig Kieswetter to complete a straightforward stumping.

Virat Kohli, a centurion in his previous ODI against England in Cardiff and a star of the recently-concluded Champions League, buckled down with Gambhir.

Gambhir eventually went in odd circumstances, bamboozled lbw by a slower-ball full-toss from Jade Dernbach.

Kohli waited for what he thought was the right ball for the big hit, but just failed to clear Kevin Pietersen, who took a fine catch on the long-off boundary off Samit Patel.

Raina survived the tightest of third-umpire calls on 16, when he could easily have been run out at the non-striker's end.

England's chase began poorly as Craig Kieswetter was undone by a touch of away swing from Praveen Kumar to be caught behind in the third over.

A stand of 71 between Cook and Trott gave England hope.

The captain's 50 came up at exactly a run a ball and featured some encouraging scoring options down the ground as well as his favoured outlets squarer of the wicket.

But from the moment he picked out deep midwicket off Jadeja, his team went into sharp and terminal decline.

Trott missed a sweep at Jadeja and was bowled, Ravi Bopara and Jonny Bairstow both went caught-and-bowled to spin and Tim Bresnan was stumped advancing to a leg-side wide from Ashwin.

* Sky Sports were unable to provide live coverage from Hyderabad due to what they described as a "pictures blackout".

David Lloyd and Nick Knight were forced to provide phone commentary of the action, with no immediate indication of whether the issue would be resolved today.

Lloyd said in commentary there were "licence issues" which had not yet been resolved.