They may have just lost their Test series against India, but wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow insists positivity remains high within the England camp.

England's tour of India went from bad to worse on Monday, crushed by an innings and 36 runs in the fourth Test as the hosts took an unassailable 3-0 series lead.

The scrutiny on embattled captain Alastair Cook has intensified ahead of the final test in Chennai, starting Friday.

But Bairstow said England remain upbeat despite their struggles on the subcontinent.

"I don't think it feels like we're in a rut," he said. "We're not walking around with our heads smoking.

"Everyone's still looking at it in a positive way, looking forward to the next game. It's not like people are going, 'Oh Jeez, we've got one game and then we can go home'. 

"It's a case of we're here and the series might have gone but we believe in ourselves we're good enough to come out and beat these guys, because that's the nature of us as a side, that's the characters we've got within the side."

As for Bairstow, he has performed fairly well following his 51-run knock in the second innings in Mumbai.

Bairstow's half-century in the penultimate Test took his series tally to 302 runs, a figure for England only bettered by team-mates Cook (310), Ben Stokes (316) and Joe Root (397).

The 27-year-old (1,420) is now just 62 runs away from breaking Michael Vaughan's record for most runs by an England batsman in a calendar year set in 2002.

"That would be amazing but I can't be thinking about 62 runs. I want to try and score hundreds in this last Test match. Every time you want to score as many as you can," Bairstow said.

"Having got to 89 already on this trip, and got past 50 a couple of times, I want to try and get a hundred in this series. So if I achieve that objective and that [breaking Vaughan's record] is a by-product, then fair enough and it'll top off a fairly decent year."