Australia tour of West Indies, 2008-------Ponting and Dyson slam crowd behaviour

Australia captain Ricky Ponting and West Indies coach John Dyson have condemned Tuesday's unruly crowd behaviour towards the end of their first One-day International.

An unfortunate bottle-throwing incident overshadowed Australia's 84-run victory in the match contested at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex.

A section of the near capacity crowd became incensed, when Nathan Bracken bowled Darren Sammy behind his back for 33.

Sammy needed confirmation from umpire Asad Rauf as to the method of his dismissal, since he did not know whether the ball came off wicketkeeper Brad Haddin's pads, or had hit the stumps directly.

But the crowd piped up, when Sammy waited near the boundary while the video umpire reviewed the decision before the final verdict was given.

When he left the field, the crowd in the new double-deck stand in the south-eastern corner of the ground started to rain plastic pep bottle and rubbish onto the field.

Play was delayed for close to 15 minutes before police and army officers moved in and regained control of the situation.

"I'm not really sure what tipped them over the edge," Ponting said. "The dismissal of Sammy bowled had a lot of confusion.

"He didn't have any idea what was going on, and I immediately went to the umpires to make certain he was out, and if not, to check and make sure he was out.

"It has happened to us over here before as well. We have had the crowd get involved like this towards the end of a game, and it is not what you want. But now that the batsman and the West Indies have seen the replays, I am pretty sure they would be happy with the decisions that were made."

Fortunately, no Australian players were injured in the fracas, but James Hopes, who was fielding near to the stand, quickly joined his teammates on the pitch to preserve himself.

"He was out there and he came in off the boundary pretty quickly," Ponting said. "Actually, he was standing in the middle even before I decided we could not continue.

"I told the umpires about it, and they got the security over there straightaway, and as it turned out, he only had to be out there for a couple of balls.

"There were bottles thrown out there, and you do not want this in international sport. Luckily, they missed James. Otherwise, it could be a bit nasty."

Ponting praised the security officials for their swift intervention, but he was more concerned that this incident would overshadow his side's win.

"At the end of the day, talking about it is taking the gloss off of another good performance from Australia," he said.

"We dominated the game from very early on. Shaun and Shane got us off to a great start, after we lost the toss, and we got a score that we thought would be good enough to win the game. That's how it turned out.

"As I said at the toss, I would have batted anyway, since I felt the pitch would get more difficult to bat on, and this was probably the case."

Dyson was also disappointed by the incident.

"I don't like to see bottle-throwing or anything thrown on the field at all," Dyson said.

"I like to see enthusiasm from the crowd and I like to see the crowd support both teams, but I don't like to see anything thrown onto the field anywhere in the World.

"I can't tell what the crowd could see from where they are. The reaction was 'wait, hang on'. At the instance of the decision being made, there was some doubt, and it was not instantaneous.

"There was consultation between the umpires, and it was just reaction what people saw. Once the umpire said Sammy was out, he left."

The second and third One-day Internationals will be contested on Friday and Sunday at Queen's Park Stadium in the Grenada capital of St. George's.