Andy Murray through after an early setback

The top-seeded Murray, playing his first singles match since late November, lost the first four games before he rallied to beat Kazakhstan’s Kukushkin in two hours and 10 minutes and advance to a second-round meeting against Gilles Muller.

Murray ended 2011 having won three of his final five tournaments before a groin injury ended his challenge at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, and he hadn’t played a singles match since withdrawing from the season-ending World Tour Finals at London

He almost suffered a miserable start to his new season after dropping the first set against an opponent ranked 91st in the world.

He announced over the weekend that he’d hired eight-time Grand Slam winner Ivan Lendl as a coach in a bid to break his drought at the majors.

No British man has won a Grand Slam singles title since Fred Perry in 1936, and Murray has been runner-up three times – losing the last two Australian Open finals.

Lendl is expected to join Murray later this week ahead of the Australian Open, which starts on 16 January in Melbourne and they will have a lot to work on judging by Murray’s season-opening performance.

In his first meeting with Kukushkin at this level, Murray could hardly have had a worse start as he found himself trailing his 24-year-old adversary by 4-0 just 20 minutes into the contest.

The 24-year-old Scot managed to save one break point during that time but lost the other two as Kukushkin broke in the first and third games while also holding his opening two service games. The British No 1 finally got on the scoreboard in game five, but Kukushkin held his service again to make it 5-1 and then the Kazakh player fashioned a set point on Murray’s next service game.

Murray managed to fight back and was serving to go up 6-5 when he didn’t attempt to return a ground stroke that kissed the baseline.

Murray called for a review, which showed the ball was good. Kukushkin also won the next two points to break serve again and hold for the set.

That was hardly the start to new year that Murray would have been hoping for, but he got himself back on track by winning the second set, making the decisive break in the fourth game.

Despite hobbling at times and clutching at his right leg, which was bandaged below the knee, he scrambled well enough the chase down a drop shot and send a passing shot down the line to convert a break-point for a 3-1 lead.

From then, Murray was always in front, with Kukushkin becoming more errant as he pushed harder on his ground strokes. Murray then made quick work of Kukushkin in the third set to clinch the match.

After the opening four games had gone with serve, Murray broke in the both the fifth and seventh games to take the set and the contest.

He still had enough energy to leap high and punch the air to celebrate the win.

Afterwards, he admitted he was not at his best at the start and was taken by surprise at the way Kukushkin played early on.

“He was hitting winners from all over the place. I was a little bit slow, I didn’t expect him to come out swinging like that in the first match of the year,” Murray said. “You have to be mentally ready from the start, and I wasn’t quite there today.

“So I need to improve on that for the next round. I played better toward the end.

“I started to move a bit better, my body loosened up a little bit – hopefully I’ll pull up okay tomorrow.”

Murray will play Muller of Luxembourg today. He said the back and leg soreness which slowed him down against Kukushkin were normal for him at the start of the season and he was confident of regaining full fitness before the Australian Open.

In other men’s first-round matches, fifth-seeded Kei Nishi-kori of Japan beat Germany’s Cedrik-Marcel Stebe 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 and sixth-seeded Radek Stepanek, a former Brisbane International champion, beat Australian Matthew Ebden 6-4, 3-6, 6-3.