“As I have been saying all along, they are a very good batting side and when you bat first and make 290, you are not going to lose so many games,” Ponting said in a post-match interview.

“The batters really did the job for them, gave their bowlers something to bowl at and unfortunately, Australia weren’t good enough,” Ponting noted.

Ponting made it clear that their defeat, after establishing a world record of 21 consecutive One-Day victories, was due to a quality display from the West Indies, who played better on the day.

“The opposition is allowed to play well every now and again as well and I think they did today, they played very well,” Ponting said.

“Going into this morning’s game, I felt really good about it. I thought we had a real good chance of winning today but the West Indies played very well and we were outplayed.

I got no excuses for my side, we were just beaten on the day,” Ponting noted.

He said Australia were hoping to continue their winning ways but failed to overcome a number of factors.

“With One-Day cricket being the sort of the game that it is, it sort of brings teams closer together and back-to-back games and conditions come into it sometimes as well. For a long time, we have been able to get over all those obstacles but today we couldn’t,” Ponting contended.

Ponting said he would be disappointed if Australia did not bounce back in the remaining two matches in Grenada on Friday and Sunday.

“I think today was a bit of a wake-up for all of us. If we don’t play at our best, then we can be beaten and that’s what happened today," Ponting remarked.

“We’ve got a few days off now before Friday’s game so there is plenty of time for a lot of the guys to freshen up and make sure that we are a better team come Friday than we were today,” Ponting said.

“We won 21 games in row. I actually feel very proud that we been able to achieve that. I’m very proud of all the players and all the support staff for making that run continue as long as it did.