SECONDS OUT, ROUND TWO

The end is in the beginning. Andy Flower may not quit at the end of this series, as reports in the summer suggested he would, but he is surely well past the midway point of his career as England manager. Come next spring, it will have been five years since he first took charge of the team. The lines on his face suggest it has been longer still. The job is a hard one, and his commitment to it unstinting. The effort has aged him. He may well have woken with his first wrinkle right after his first Test. In Kingston, England – mentally shot, technically inadequate – were befuddled by a fast bowler, bowled out for 51 in the first match of the series. "A new low," we said in this paper at the time. But it was the first of a succession of such performances since, the latest arriving in Brisbane last week.

Flower has built one of the strongest sides in the history of English cricket. Under him, England have won 30 of their 62 Tests. Which gives them a win-loss ratio of 2.30. South Africa, who have played 38 and won 19 in the same time, fare a little better, with a figure of 2.37. But no one else comes close, no one else even gets more than 1.76. But for all their success, Flower's England have always been bad losers, the peaks studded with spectacular defeats, many worse than the one just gone.

They have only lost 13 Tests while he has been in charge, but a lot of those have been horrors, the kind that provoke crisis-clarion headlines and calls for culls from the XI. In those 13 they have only once come within 50 runs or five wickets of winning. There was the innings and 80-run defeat against Australia at Headingley later in 2009, the 267-run loss at the Waca in the return series, two thrashings against Pakistan in Dubai and another, worse still, in Abu Dhabi. Two more innings defeats, one home and one away, against South Africa at the Oval and in Johannesburg, the nine-wicket ignominy in Ahmedabad. And now this.

Flower and his team have endured harder matches and darker patches, and those who feel they have reached a nadir now must have forgotten both how poorly they have played at points in the past, and how well they have tended to rally and respond when they have been written off. Pakistan are the only team who have beaten them twice in a row. You'd think we would have long since learned not to over-react, that the team deserve a little more faith than their more fickle supporters show them, that even the more excitable members of the media might cut them some slack. But the long view seems to have become something of a luxury. We all rush to judge. But then sensible opinions seldom sell papers, and for fervent fans, febrile reactions are half the fun.

Flower, thankfully, is a phlegmatic man. He has a calmer mind and a cooler hand. He and his team have survived similar situations, been badly beaten in the first game of series, often enough before, against West Indies in 2009, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2011-12, South Africa that summer, and India in 2012-13. In the first instance, Flower called a team meeting at the hotel the next day which he told the players: "It is all of our jobs to do something about this, and if we don't we will be out of jobs." A frank conversation followed, which cut across the rifts which had riven the team in the run-up to Peter Moores' sacking. Ian Bell was dropped for the next match. It was a defining moment. It helped secure Flower his job. His appointment was temporary at the time, but became permanent soon after. And it set the tone for his tenure in the weeks, even years, which followed. The side had started to forge the strength of character which served them so well in Ashes later that year, and in South Africa the following winter.

England's experiences in Ahmedabad are more pertinent now. Cook says he will draw on what his team did there. Then it was reckoned the batsmen were suffering from a constitutional inability to play spin, much as many now say they cannot play pace. Cook scotched the first theory in the second innings of that match, and if the 65 he made in Brisbane wasn't nearly so emphatic a rebuttal, it still contained glimpses of the reserves of resilience he and his team have, and will need to draw on in the games ahead. After Ahmedabad, Flower dropped Tim Bresnan so that he could bring in Monty Panesar, and replaced Ian Bell, who had flown home to be there for the birth of his baby boy, with Jonny Bairstow. Similar decisions to the ones he has to make now, with Jonathan Trott out of the squad, and uncertainty about his best bowling attack.

The lessons England need to learn now are ones they started studying a long time ago, which makes them well equipped for this particular task. If the Australians, a team who have just won their first Test in 10, make the mistake of thinking they have the beating of England, who have lost just once in 12 months, off the back of that one game, so much the better for Flower. Any hubris can only help. England will be regathering, readying themselves for a second Test which will be played on an altogether different type of pitch. It's not that England's chances are dead, just that the contest is alive.

• This is an extract from the Spin, the Guardian's free weekly cricket email. To sign up, click here.