As India and Pakistan face to gear up in the epic rivalry, the statistics always show that how Pakistan lags behind a good batting display over years.

But their coach Arthur differs on that. He thinks the time is changing and Pakistan is getting better with their batting too.

“It’s changing. It’s changing,” he stressed a day ahead of the clash against India. “Certainly in terms of awareness. Certainly in terms of brand of cricket. It is changing. I’m comfortable where we’re at. I thought the last two ODIs in the West Indies we were very, very good. And it’s been well-documented. But in the first ODI, I thought we could have got another 20 runs in that one. Saying that we still got 306. And I think that’s testimony to the change that the guys have made in terms of their mindset.”

Just to emphasise his point further, Arthur added

“It was very interesting to read the other day — I go through the stats quite regularly — was that in the last year we’ve scored the third-most amount of 300s. England is way, way ahead, but Pakistan is number three on that list. And I think that’s testimony to the brand of cricket that we are starting to play.”Pakistan has already played at Edgbaston and thus are aware of the conditions, unlike India.”It was interesting to see, and I think the wicket is probably, according to the groundsmen, going to be just a little bit quicker tomorrow. Yes, I thought Australia probably adjusted a little bit too late. We eventually saw a lot of cross-seam deliveries. We saw a lot of change of pace. And I think that’s how we’ve got to go. So when Saf [Sarfraz Ahmed] and I sit down tomorrow and have a look at the unit we want to take out, we’ve got to offer ourselves options. And that’s what we’ve tried to do with our attack, is offer ourselves options,” he said.

Pakistan batting order has a total of 19,519 runs with an experience of 651 ODI matches.

Going completely by the statistics, India has a slight edge due to the amalgamation of experience and youth in their team while Pakistan is fielding quite an inexperienced side where only Mohammed Hafeez and Shoaib Malik have played over a 100 ODIs. They have fallen behind Bangladesh in terms of being in touch with modern limited-overs cricket.

They will need every bit of unrest in the other camp, to beat an opponent they have beaten only four times in their last 15 times.

“That’s where we find ourselves as a team at the moment: Extremely well prepared and ready to go,” says Arthur.

Meanwhile, the skipper preferred to play the underdog tag going into the game.

“India will be the one under pressure. There is no pressure on us. We are at No. 8. Where can we go below this?,” laughed Sarfraz. “We’ll try to play freely. From here if we win, we can go up in the rankings and if we win from here, they’ll be a little unsettled.”

As India faces Pakistan, the weather conditions will play a huge part and also a look on the fact what should be the team combination.