Welcome, England, to high school. You’ve had your lunch money stolen, your head flushed down the toilet, a chalk knob drawn on your back, your pants pulled down in front of Chelsea Lush, and you’ve walked home crying, telling your Mum you’re never going back. Oh yes, this was Big Boy’s Cricket, and England’s previously peacockian power-hitting Golden Generation, playing on their favourite ground, were given an utter schooling.

It was all rather like an upcoming heavyweight boxer who has breezed through a series of carefully selected and eminently winnable bouts in readiness for his shot at the title, only to discover from the moment he steps into the ring with the champion the latter’s resounding superiority expressed through the medium of a stiff, skull-rattling jab. And then another. And then another, his longer reach making attempts to get in close and trade blows almost suicidal. Yep, England have a fine ODI side, particularly in the batting department – even more particularly, when facing sides without wrist-spinners they cannot pick – but this was as one-sided a game as an eight-wicket defeat with 59 balls remaining would suggest.

As the flesh-and-blood embodiment of India’s confidence, Kohli’s captaincy here was authoritative and tactically detailed – and let’s be honest, there’s never a minute on a cricket field when he acts with anything less than laser focus and bristling intent – making seven bowling changes between the ninth and twentieth overs, deploying leg slips, subtly adjusting the angles for different batsmen. But the truth is that from the moment Jason Roy toe-ended an attempted reverse-sweep from Kuldeep’s third ball (no blame attached: it’s hard to put it up Kuldeep without a paddle) England had their heads pushed under the water.

Two more wickets in Kuldeep’s second over – Root and Bairstow, both lbw: the former picking a leggie but missing to be stone dead; the latter not picking a wrongun to be dismissed on review – had Kohli immediately bringing on Raina to the two left-handers, Morgan and Stokes. Straight away, he bustled through a maiden, and overall sent down 15 dots in his three overs. There were a lot of cheap dots, in fact, many to a subdued and scratchy Ben Stokes, who managed only 8 from his first 36 balls.

England rallied to 195-4 with 12 overs left – three or four years ago, a more than steady platform; here, a rickety scaffold – but they were miles behind the game and Kuldeep’s third spell, in which he dismissed Buttler, Stokes and Willey to finish with 6-25 from 10 mesmerising overs, absolutely killed it. England failed to score a boundary for 72 balls after the second drinks break – a 10-over spell from the 35th over went: 4, 5, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, with the same period against Australia in June disappearing for 110 with 6 sixes and 5 fours – and it required a late flurry from “the Chuckle Brothers” (as the ECB’s ODI programme billed Moeen and Adil Rashid) to lift them to 268. It was around 100 under par.

The way in which India’s Rolls-Royce batting unit cruised to victory was as ominous as it was impressive. There was an early blitz from Shikhar Dhawan – who raced to 32 halfway through the powerplay before falling to overconfidence – and then Rohit and Kohli took over with innings that oozed class. Rohit, in particular, was able to score at will, both sides of the wicket, front foot and back, patently picking England’s best bowler, Rashid, too. Not only do England have a problem working out how many runs they need to score against a top-class wrist-spinner in order to stretch a world-class batting line-up, they also need to work out how they’re going to string a few dots together against them.

They may not need to find the answers over the next two games, but they will certainly need them before next year’s World Cup.