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We study the development of gravitational instability in the strongly non-linear regime. For this purpose we use a number of statistical indicators such as filamentary statistics, spectrum of overdense/underdense regions and the void probability function, each of which probes a particular aspect of gravitational clustering. We use these statistical indicators to discriminate between different approximations to gravitational instability which we test against N-body simulations. The approximations which we test are, the truncated Zel'dovich approximation (TZ), the adhesion model (AM), and the frozen flow (FF) and linear potential (LP) approximations. Of these we find that FF and LP break down relatively early, soon after the non-linear length scale exceeds R_* -- the mean distance between peaks of the gravitational potential. The reason for this break down is easy to understand, particles in FF are constrained to follow the streamlines of the initial velocity field. Shell crossing is absent in this case and structure gradually freezes as particles begin to collect near minima of the gravitational potential. In LP particles follow the lines of force of the primordial potential, oscillating about its minima at late times when the non-linear length scale k_{\rm NL}^{-1}\simeq R_*. Unlike FF and LP the adhesion model (and to some extent TZ) continues to give accurate results even at late times when k_{\rm NL}^{-1} \ge R_*. This is because both AM and TZ us

Gravitational instability in the strongly non-linear regime: a study of various approximations