No other country has come close to matching their success on the playing field and there seems to be no end to their global domination.

They won the World Cup for the third time in succession in 2007 and are on the verge of breaking their own world record for the most consecutive Test wins.

Yet, at the same time they should be celebrating their remarkable achievements, the players are under attack, facing intense criticism and scrutiny about their behaviour.

They have not broken any laws or rules of the game and most of their opponents have openly adopted the same ruthless approach.

Still, the critics, and there are plenty of them, have accused the Australians of being arrogant and breaching the spirit of the game through excessive appealing, refusing to walk and sledging their opponents.

They have also been accused of employing double-standards, happy to bully their opponents whenever they are winning but the first to cry foul when they start losing.

HARD BUT FAIR

The players have laughed off the claims, sticking to the Australian mantra that cricket is a professional sport and they play the game hard but fair.

The debate about Australia's on-field conduct has been raging for decades, but has been thrust back into the spotlight after the bad-tempered end to last week's second Test against India.

The Indian captain Anil Kumble accused the Australians of bad sportsmanship in the aftermath of his team's loss, evoking memories of the infamous Bodyline series of 1932-33.

Kumble's comments might easily have been mistaken for sour grapes but they struck a raw nerve with many cricket followers who have grown tired with the team's antics.

Emotions were running high as the tabloids and radio shock-jocks tried to blame Australia's on-field antics for the far more serious claims of racial abuse that had been laid against Harbhajan Singh.

It was sensationalism at its worst, trivialising an issue that sport has long struggled to come to terms with, and detracted from the debate about the players.

LACK GRACE

The announcement that the Indian board were threatening to cancel the tour unless Harbhajan was cleared was also reflected in the polls. Officials were now the media's target.

Still, the general consensus remains that Ricky Ponting's side are a great team but lack grace.

History may judge them harshly, remembering their behaviour rather than their achievements, but cricket history is littered with scandals far more serious than the over-zealous appealing of Ponting's men. The gentleman's game has been filled with cases of match-fixing, racism, drug use, ball-tampering even physical confrontation, virtually since the first Test was played in 1877.

Indeed, English newspapers were eulogising about the spirit of cricket as long ago as the 1880s. Betting on matches was rife at the time and the sport's most revered figure, WG Grace, was a compulsive sledger who broke all sorts of rules.

There were fears the game would be ruined forever when the English skipper Douglas Jardine instructed his bowlers to aim at the Australian batsmen's heads during the Bodyline series but interest in the sport only increased.

There is a lesson in history too for Ponting's men, whose defence of their antics hangs on their argument that they perform within the rules.

That was the same argument Greg Chappell used when he ordered his brother Trevor to bowl the infamous underarm delivery in an ODI against New Zealand in Melbourne in 1981.