Without knowing it, it is difficult to detect that players from both sides are sharing the same hotel.

Carl Hooper isn't the centre of attention in Sharjah

That is not to say that Pakistan and West Indies have come to the wrong place.

Sharjah stages highly successful limited over tournaments every year with the stadium packed and television coverage guaranteeing widespread following.

Desperate

The Pakistan Cricket Board are desperate for this series to go ahead as in sporting terms they've been hit harder than most after the terrorist attacks on the USA in September.

The cancellation of several tours at all levels has hit hard at Pakistan's cricket funds particularly with the fall in television revenues.

The board also needed their players back in action after so much inactivity over the last few months.

It's not that the people of Sharjah are not interested in cricket.

The fans will be neutral for this match

Many with their Indian, Pakistan, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi backgrounds have been brought up on cricket before leaving home.

But it was mainly of the one-day kind with Test cricket being seen only fleetingly on television.

Many of them are here to work - either in the spin-off to the oil, financial or construction industries or in the service industries attached to the hotels of Dubai.

Day off

They may well take a day off in order to watch a match with a conclusion but the thought of taking days off to watch a five-day game seems a distant one.

As one local hotel waiter explained to me: 'I'd take a day off to see Asian countries if they were playing in a one-day game but I'm not so sure about a series'.

The condition of the pitch is always a big talking point before a Test match but this one, being used for the first time for a five-day match, has created even greater interest.

Both sides will be eager, no matter how big the crowd, to seize the opportunity to show what Test cricket has to offer.

Pakistan (from): Waqar Younis (capt), Inzamam-ul-Haq (vice-capt), Shahid Afridi, Taufiq Umar, Yousuf Youhana, Younis Khan, Faisal Iqbal, Naveed Latif, Rashid Latif, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Zahid, Mohammad Sami, Saqlain Mushtaq, Danish Kaneria, Abdur Razzaq.

West Indies (from): Carl Hooper (captain), Ridley Jacobs (vice-captain), Chris Gayle, Daren Ganga, Sherwin Campbell, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels, Ryan Hinds, Darrell Brown, Mervyn Dillon, Cameron Cuffy, Pedro Collins, Corey Collymore, Dinanath Ramnarine.