England's hands-off ethos braces for challenge of dead-rubber syndrome

England's last training session of this eight-week tour of India had a distinct end-of-term feel in Dharamsala.

It began with a spontaneous intra-squad catching competition with very "teachers versus students" energy. Brendon McCullum, usually the one wielding the bat on his knees, was in at third slip, while Paul Collingwood, often the thrower, rolled back the years at backward point. Their respective roles had been taken on by Ollie Pope and Ben Stokes, with Marcus Trescothick (second) and Jeetan Patel (first) completing the cordon.

The rules were simple: 20 chances each, one point for a catch, two for a great one. McCullum and Collingwood came tantalisingly close to pouching a few worldies, while Trescothick was as reliable as ever. Patel, flawless, could still do a job now. Naturally, the active cricketers, represented by Joe Root, Zak Crawley, Jonny Bairstow and Ben Duckett, won.

Even the morning began with a field trip to meet the Dalai Lama, though the only attendees were Pope, Crawley, Gus Atkinson, Tom Hartley, Dan Lawrence and Bairstow, along with his family, who are in town for his 100th Test cap. England's own gurus, Stokes and McCullum, decided against the trip further up McLeod Ganj.

In another era, under more headmasterly England management, such an appointment would have been mandatory. And training would have probably started with some performative self-flagellation in the form of shuttle runs to show just how serious this group is about losing this series 3-2 as opposed to 3-1 or 4-1.

That intent is there all the same. The freedom that has been afforded by McCullum and Stokes has not been abused, with all barring Shoaib Bashir and Ollie Robinson - both reporting ill this morning with stomach bugs - getting what they needed from the nets and bowling out in the middle ahead of this fifth and final Test.

It was revealing that opposition captain Rohit Sharma ceded that, even after four Tests, he still is not quite sure what Bazball is. "I don't know exactly what this term means," he said in his press conference. "But, yeah, clearly they've played better cricket than the last series they were here."

That will be music to Stokes' ears, not least because he and everyone else in that dressing-room are just about fed up with a term they deem reductive. Particularly as it seems to come up more in their defeats - the three here, and the two against Australia at the start of last summer's Ashes - than, say, when they overturned a 190-run first-innings deficit in Hyderabad to go one-up. Even so, they wanted to do more than just "better" than their 2021 iteration. You don't get "most improved" awards in Test cricket.

Both Stokes and McCullum acknowledge the need to take this project to the next level. To evolve from a team that gets into pressure situations to one that wins them. After India clinched the series in Ranchi, Stokes dismissed the notion they need to be to be more ruthless. But his comments on Tuesday, that "once you're in, you have to earn it and keep it", spoke of a desire to adopt a narrower, harsher focus around both method and personnel going forward.

Speaking less than 24 hours later, Stokes took a different approach, using his last pre-match press conference to staunchly champion the progression of his squad over the course of this tour. All while acknowledging that "in a results-based business, that can sometimes sound stupid and deluded".

"You say India haven't had some of their best players, you look at the players we came out here with. We were written off completely before we had even played a game this series. Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir, people couldn't believe we'd picked them.

"Look at what they've managed to achieve on this trip. We've seen Ollie Pope, the innings he played. Ben Duckett, think about the last tour he had in India (averaging 6 from just three innings in 2016), how he's come out here and played and changed as a player and a person.

"But I've been very proud of everyone who's gone out there. Just looking at results, you don't get a full understanding of how we have progressed on this tour. India's record at home is phenomenal. We won't be the only team to come here and lose a series, as their record shows.

"But I think saying that because Virat [Kohli] is not here, some of the best players are not here, is it disappointing? No. I look at how much a lot of individuals have progressed on this tour, and for me as a captain it's good."

Of course, it is hard not to set India's many absences - Kohli and Mohammed Shami for all of it, KL Rahul for the final four Tests, Ravi Jadeja for the second - against England's mistakes, particularly in the third and fourth Tests, and regard this as a chance missed. Hartley and Bashir, in particular, have gone above and beyond expectations, but 'what ifs' sting. Better decisions in a variety of situations could have meant the thousands of travelling fans descending on the HPCA Stadium over the coming days had a winner-takes-all showdown to bump this fixture up the bucket list.

This dead rubber (World Test Championship points aside) offers an intriguing glimpse into where this group of players is at right now. Morale remains high, something that should not be taken for granted at the end of a long stint with more defeats than wins, and that was clear as training wound down. The majority of the squad stayed on to kick a football on the outfield as the Himalayas began wrapping up under blankets of clouds.

As Stokes has said a few times, in the moments since the first Test, when it has come down to skill versus skill, India have won them all. One final collection of those battles awaits between a team motivated to rubber-stamp their superiority and another desperate to close that gap to save face.

Ultimately, this unique situation for England is a neat control experiment of the ethos of this era. The smart-casualisation of the day-to-day grind ensures that downtime - on the golf course or otherwise - effectively counters the pressures of Test cricket. The 10-day trip to Abu Dhabi to break up a long tour with family time, and the odd optional training session, were geared towards getting players to commit wholeheartedly when it matters most.

Now we will see how much of themselves they will give when it matters a little less.