Misbah-ul-Haq is not impressed by statistics and he doesn't care about history either. That helps, particularly with an India-Pakistan match due to break out at the World Cup within three days.

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

Umar Akmal is their 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. "According to me, the most important thing for any team is winning. If we don't score a hundred and win the World Cup, then that is very good for us. If we score centuries and get knocked out of the tournament, then it's no use."