World cham­pi­ons West In­dies will get their of­fi­cial cam­paign go­ing to­day when they en­gage the top Test play­ing na­tion Pak­istan in their open­ing T20 fix­ture here in Dubai.

Pak­istan's stel­lar run in Test crick­et cul­mi­nat­ed with their rise to No.1 in the ICC's rank­ings for the first time ear­li­er this week but their lim­it­ed-overs crick­et per­for­mances have left much to be de­sired - ninth in ODIs and sev­enth in T20Is. Their out­dat­ed style, based on a safe­ty-first ap­proach, has large­ly been re­spon­si­ble for their sharp nose­dive - a stark con­trast to their op­po­nents.

West In­dies are way be­hind the pack in Test crick­et, but their at­tack-first ap­proach in lim­it­ed-overs crick­et, es­pe­cial­ly in T20Is, has made them the heart­throbs of the short­est for­mat. It resur­faced when they se­cured their sec­ond World T20 ear­li­er this year in In­dia.

Their MVPs An­dre Rus­sell and Chris Gayle are not in the team but they still have the lux­u­ry of depth. Open­er Evin Lewis shel­lacked a 48-ball ton against In­dia in Lauder­hill last month, the sixth fastest in T20Is. The un­capped play­ers - Rov­man Pow­ell and Nicholas Pooran, who hit 143 out of West In­dies Un­der-19s' 208 at this venue two years ago at the World Cup - over­came a top-or­der flut­ter in the warm-up game against Emi­rates Crick­et Board XI on Tues­day.

De­spite the com­fort­able win, coach, Rod­dy Es­t­wick is still not pleased with their ex­e­cu­tion in all de­part­ments and has been work­ing to im­prove these ar­eas in the build up to to­day's match.

The Windies eas­i­ly beat the Board XI by 22 runs and Es­t­wick said the out­ing had high­light­ed de­fi­cien­cies which need­ed to be cor­rect­ed. "[The game] was a good work out for us be­cause it was the first time we've been out in the mid­dle since we've been here so we're hap­py with that," Es­t­wick told re­porters here.

"But there are ar­eas to im­prove and we're go­ing to try and make sure that over the next few days we try and utilise all the fa­cil­i­ties and get it ab­solute­ly right."

Fin­ish­er with bat, fin­ish­er with the ball and ex­cel­lent sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, Dwayne Bra­vo is prob­a­bly the most sought-af­ter T20 play­er and Pak­istan will have to be wary of the big dip­ping of­f­cut­ter on slug­gish sur­faces the sides are like­ly to en­counter in this se­ries.

Pooran will jos­tle with Pow­ell for a mid­dle-or­der slot thrown open by the ab­sence of Lendl Sim­mons, who is out be­cause of me­di­al rea­sons.

Pak­istan don't have enough fire­pow­er, but Sar­fraz Ahmed's calm­ness in a team filled with mer­cu­r­ial bats­men stands out. They al­so wel­come back their high­est run-get­ter in T20Is - Umar Ak­mal (1689 runs at a strike rate of 122.92). They showed some late sparks on the trip to the UK, but it re­mains to be seen if they can con­vert it in­to a prop­er white-ball re­vival.

For­mer Pak­istan coach Waqar You­nis was all for Umar re­gain­ing his berth fol­low­ing the World T20 if he showed do­mes­tic form. Umar has done just that, fin­ish­ing as the lead­ing run-get­ter in the Na­tion­al T20 Cup with 363 runs, in­clud­ing 34 in an over off Yasir Arafat, at an av­er­age and strike rate of 72.60 and 183.33.

Umar is a near-cer­tain­ty in the XI, which means Mo­ham­mad Rizwan, who had played as a spe­cial­ist bats­man in the one-off T20 at Old Traf­ford, is like­ly to miss out. Left-arm spin­ning all­rounder Mo­ham­mad Nawaz, who claimed 4 for 26 to seal Karachi Blues' tense Na­tion­al T20 Cup win, might push Hasan Ali and Saad Nasim out of the team.