England were thrashed again in India today but captain Kevin Pietersen still refused to hit the panic button.

Pietersen's side lost the first one-day international in Rajkot by a whopping 158 runs, making only 229 in reply to the home side's 387 for five - the highest total conceded by England in limited-overs cricket.

But instead of criticising his own team immediately after a hopelessly one-sided contest, the England captain praised the opposition, and batsman Yuvraj Singh in particular.

Yuvraj (left) hit 138 not out from 78 balls and shell-shocked Pietersen said: "When you've watched an innings like that you just have to take you hat off and say, 'Well played'.

"We are going to sit down and see where we made a few mistakes but if a bloke plays like that you are behind the game straight away. India played super cricket today."

Pietersen (right) now hopes his players will recover over the weekend. "I hate losing," he said. "We'll go over what we've done not so well, try to sort that out and regroup.

"There are six games left in the series and we want to take some real good cricket to Indore on Monday."

After England were bowled out for 99 in the Stanford £10million match and for 98 by a Mumbai club side, Pietersen claimed those performances "didn't matter in the grand scheme of things".

Suddenly, though, England, 4-0 winners over South Africa a couple of months ago, appear to be on the wrong sort of roll.

As for India, there seems to be no stopping the recent conquerors of Australia. And Yuvraj's stunning performance prompted captain Mahendra Dhoni to say: "On a day like this I don't think the opposition can do much because he was batting at his best."