For an hour this morning, clad in their knitwear and being examined exclusively by swing, England might have been forgiven for thinking they were back on home soil.
By mid-afternoon, though, a familiar reality had set in, the tourists again bamboozled into a subcontinental spin and India, thanks to the brilliance of Kuldeep Yadav, firmly in charge of the Fifth Test.
All 10 wickets fell to India’s tweakers, including five of the top-six to Kuldeep, as England, having won the toss, collapsed from 175 for three to be skittled for 218.
In reply, India’s openers showed no remorse, half-centuries from the dazzling Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma, who remains unbeaten, taking the hosts to 135 for one at stumps.
Against a backdrop of Himalayan peaks, England’s implosion plunged to its nadir in a wretched 13-ball spell, when Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow fell without adding a run to the total, each also torching a review.
For Bairstow, in particular, this was not in the script, the batter handed his 100th cap by Root in an emotional presentation at the head of the day and emerging a man on a mission in a typically punchy start with the bat.
Starting, though, has not been England’s problem; again, plenty made it out of the blocks, but only Zak Crawley, with 79, onto a score of note.
Instead, of the Test’s two centurions, it was Ravichandran Ashwin who seized the occasion best, the opening day of his own 100th outing in Indian whites marked with figures of four for 51.
Even he was upstaged, though, by Kuldeep, who began the series out of the side but looks undroppable now.
You feel for England, who came to India trying to ape the triple-threat of Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, only to find a fourth string added to the home bow.
Stokes had insisted on Wednesday that, despite trailing 3-1, his players would not come into the finale with the weary mindset of a team already weighing up the film selection on the flight home.
Still, a long tour has taken its toll, and with Ollie Robinson laid low and only 13 men left standing, coaches Marcus Trescothick and Paul Collingwood were each listed as substitute fielders, adding to a mufti-day feel.
Spinner Shoaib Bashir had shaken off enough of the same illness to keep his place, and when the coin came down in Stokes’s favour on a good batting track, the youngster ought reasonably have expected another full day in the sheds to mend.
Such wishful thinking might have been outed sooner had Jasprit Bumrah found the breakthrough in a devilish opening spell, Dharamshala living up to its reputation as India’s most seam-friendly ground and Crawley and Ben Duckett, in this spiritual setting, stifled into a state of enforced zen.
Gradually, though, the pair began to impose, Crawley surviving a couple of reviews for leg-before but beginning to thread the field. When Duckett fell, it was in aggressive style, caught slogging Kuldeep by a superb Shubman Gill dive, with the opening stand worth 64.
Crawley’s fourth half-century of the series came drilling the spinner down the ground, before Ashwin was despatched for six into the straight stand. On the cusp of lunch, though, Ollie Pope advanced and missed, stumped by Dhruv Jurel off Kuldeep to give the session an even tint.
India skipper Rohit Sharma let Crawley off the hook when ignoring pleas for a caught-behind review, but Kuldeep soon made the gaffe an irrelevance with the ball of the day, one that drifted to pitch outside off-stump before turning fiercely through the opener and crashing into the top of leg.
So, enter Bairstow, quickly adding a second milestone of the day in passing 6,000 Test runs and prompting expectation of one of those trademark ‘rage tons’ as the Yorkshireman sprinted to 29 from 17 balls.
The 18th, though, proved his undoing and sparked England’s fold. Caught behind off a feather-edge, neither Bairstow nor Stokes picked Kuldeep’s googly, the skipper pinned in front a couple of overs later. In between, Root missed a straight one from Jadeja to leave England’s middle-order in pieces once again.
Bashir delivered the evening’s sole riposte when he had Jaiswal stumped, though only after the opener had at one stage hit him for three sixes in four balls, his series tally now beyond 700 runs.
