"An egg was thrown at Muralitharan and it struck him", confirmed a top Sri Lankan cricket official, adding that the authorities were looking into the incident that happened on Friday night.

The Sri Lankans are in Australia to play a tri-nation ODI series, which also involves India.

The Island Newspaper reported that Sri Lankan cricketers, including Muralitharan, were jeered and attacked by some local residents in Hobart, when they were returning to their hotel after dinner on Friday night.

"The Sri Lanka team management had then taken action to safely guide the players back to their hotel and the police arrived at the scene," the Newspaper said.

The off spinner has had a history of hostility with the Australian spectators, who have jeered him on previous tours, forcing him to stop going Down Under for some time.

Muralitharan was no-balled by Aussie umpires and the bowler had to undergo laboratory tests to prove the legality of his bowling action.

Muralitharan's stormy relationship with Australian cricket stems back to Sri Lanka's 1995-96 tour of Down Under when controversial umpire Darrell Hair no-balled him.

Constantly jeered by the hostile crowd and branded a chucker by the then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a hurt Muralitharan boycotted the tour in 2004.

After Hair, fellow Australian umpire Ross Emerson also called Muralitharan during a ODI series there.

Murali subsequently underwent a bio-mechanical analysis of his action at the University of Western Australia in Perth and cleared his name.

That, however, had little effect on the Australian crowd, which got even more hostile as the Sri Lankan looked set to overtake Shane Warne's world record of 708 Test wickets at the leggie's home turf.

Murali, however, finally achieved the feat when Sri Lanka hosted England last year.