Batting numbers are nothing to worry about

According to Misbah the most important thing about a team is to win. If Pakistan can win the world cup without scoring hundred its good but the team gets knocked out after players’ scoring centuries is embarrassing.

Misbah-ul-Haq doesn’t care about history and is not impressed by statistics also. That helps, particularly with an India-Pakistan match due to break out at the World Cup at March 30.

The man with the team’s top score in the World Cup so far – 83 not out against Sri Lanka and One of the anchors of Pakistan’s batting – Misbah said numbers could be meaningless if they did not agree with the results column. Pakistan’s certainly don’t.

Umar Akmal is Pakistans’ heaviest run-scorer in this World Cup, but he is placed as low as 28th in the list of top run-getters. Never mind the batsmen from Test-playing nations, Umar follows players from Netherlands, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Canada in the table.

Umar has scored 211 runs from five innings, with a single half-century. Among his team-mates, he is followed by Misbah (192), Kamran Akmal (188), Younis Khan (172), Mohmmed Hafeez (172), Asad Shafiq (124 from two innings) and Abdul Razzaq (101). Of the batsmen, only Misbah and Younis have scored more than one fifty in the tournament, and the team have managed nine overall. When compared to India, those are paltry figures: India have five centuries, ten fifties and five India batsmen have scored more runs than Umar.

Yet Pakistan finished at the top of their group and, regardless of the weakness of some of its Associate opposition, had the more emphatic first four weeks of the tournament between the two teams. In Mohali, after a lengthy round of football, fielding and then the conventional nets, Misbah deconstructed the numbers down to their bare basics.