The greatest test of a sportsman is not how he plays when he is in good nick, or even "in the zone", but how he copes with a loss of form. Great players grit their teeth and fight it out: they look ugly sometimes, but they hang in there. Lesser men lose patience and throw it away. All India's batsmen, bar Sachin Tendulkar, have something to learn from Andy Flower. Forget what Flower did against India last year, his recent form has been dismal. In his last four Tests – three in Sri Lanka, and the first one against India at Nagpur – he had made only 91 runs in eight innings at an average of just over 11. His single-figure dismissals in the first Test must have disheartened Zimbabwe considerably, as he is their only batsman to average more than 30 in Tests.

Everything did not fall together magically for him today. He got off to a decent enough start, hitting a couple of sparkling boundaries off Javagal Srinath and exploiting some horrid looseners from Sanjay Bangar, but the bowlers took the upper hand in the afternoon session. Zaheer Khan bowled magnificently and troubled Flower a fair bit, while the spinners looked capable of running through the Zimbabwe batting order at any moment.

Imagine for a second what the top Indian batsmen, in a similar slump, would have done in such a situation. Rahul Dravid would have dug in to play an innings of character, made something like 3 off 61 balls (as he did against England earlier this season), realised he was getting bogged down and, team man that he is, tried to lift the tempo ... and got himself out.

Sourav Ganguly would either have charged the bowler as he did in the last Test (out of Test form, falling back on one-day strength), flashed outside off and nicked to slip with his legendary timing, or slashed on the off side, with the demonic ferocity of a man who knows God has left him behind, and found the nimble hands of a willing gully fielder.

Not Monsieur Flower. Immaculate in defence (although he was beaten a couple of times by Zaheer), he figured out early on that on a slow wicket where the ball seemed more constrained by gravity than usual, and where it showed a tendency to veer off line like a mischievous urchin running through a crowded marketplace, it would not make sense to play as one normally would on a typical Indian pitch: on the front foot. So he waited for the ball to come on to him and, first with inventive dabs then with clinical sweeps, he kept the scoreboard ticking over. He eschewed that staple shot of his, the reverse-sweep - his motto seemed to be "When in form, dominate, when out of form, survive and keep the scoreboard going". Not a bad mantra if it gets you 92 runs.

Dion Ebrahim played an admirable knock, making up with character what he lacks in talent. India needs more of that and, interestingly, has one player who has dollops of it: Deep Dasgupta. Too bad he can't keep wicket.

Amit Varma is assistant editor of Wisden.com India.

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