DHA­KA-A bus car­ry­ing the West In­dies crick­et team was hit by stones as it left Sher-e-Bangla Na­tion­al Sta­di­um yes­ter­day af­ter the side eas­i­ly beat Bangladesh in a group match at the World Cup.West In­dies me­dia man­ag­er Philip Spoon­er told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that sev­en stones hit the right side of the bus, with two of them crack­ing win­dows, as it left the sta­di­um in the Dha­ka sub­urb of Mir­pur."Two stones hit the win­dows on the right side of the bus but they did not smash or throw glass in­to the bus," Spoon­er said. "Every­one is safe and back at the ho­tel. No one is hurt."

Spoon­er added that West In­dies team man­ag­er Richie Richard­son would be talk­ing to the West In­dies Crick­et Board and ask­ing it to take the mat­ter to the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil for in­ves­ti­ga­tion."There were not a hell of a lot of peo­ple throw­ing the stones," Spoon­er added, "but one per­son throw­ing stones at your bus is one too many if you know what I mean."Im­ti­az Ah­mad, deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er and chief of se­cu­ri­ty at Mir­pur, said it was a case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty by the stone-throw­ers af­ter a dis­mal per­for­mance by the home side.

"They thought that it was the Bangladesh team bus and hurled stones at it," Ah­mad said.ICC spokesman Rabeed Imam in Dha­ka in­sist­ed that se­cu­ri­ty had not been at fault dur­ing the events."Both teams left in the same con­voy," Imam told the AP. "Along the way a few stones were thrown at the West In­dies team bus. There were no ma­jor is­sues and both teams reached the ho­tel safe­ly."Se­cu­ri­ty for all the teams is of para­mount im­por­tance. I can tell you that it was def­i­nite­ly the strictest of se­cu­ri­ty for the two teams."

Imam said he had no in­for­ma­tion as to whether Bangladesh po­lice would now be in­volved in the mat­ter.His view of the se­cu­ri­ty was not shared, how­ev­er, by West In­dies play­ers.Jalal Yunus, chair­man of the Bangladesh Crick­et Board's me­dia com­mit­tee, said it was like­ly the work of young trou­ble­mak­ers and sought to play down the in­ci­dent."Both bus­es were mov­ing back to­geth­er on their way to the ho­tel, most prob­a­bly some un­ruly youths from side­walks did it," he said. "This should not be con­sid­ered a se­ri­ous is­sue."

He said that three mem­bers of the lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee went to meet the West In­dies team to dis­cuss the events.BCB pres­i­dent Mustafa Ka­mal ex­pressed his re­gret at the stone-throw­ing. "It is un­for­tu­nate. There was suf­fi­cient se­cu­ri­ty, yet it hap­pened," Ka­mal said. "We are very sor­ry for this."West In­dies had ear­li­er rout­ed Bangladesh by nine wick­ets af­ter dis­miss­ing the tour­na­ment co-host for 58, its low­est score in a World Cup game and the fourth low­est to­tal in World Cup his­to­ry.Richard­son's team is sched­uled to leave Dha­ka on Sat­ur­day and play its next match against Ire­land in Mo­hali, In­dia, on March 11. (AP)