"The Aussies have not been caught tampering with the ball, were not responsible for Bodyline, have not doctored wickets as much as most nations, were not much involved in the match-fixing scandals."

Were not much involved in the match- fixing scandal? Mr. Roebuck, surely you can't be serious. Australian players, and the Australian Cricket Board (ACB), were a bit more involved if we are to believe what Roebuck himself wrote in the Australian edition of the 1999 Wisden Almanack:

"Australian players were not as innocent in regard to the continuing betting scandals as had been supposed...it emerged that Shane Warne and Mark Waugh had taken money."

and...

"By keeping the matter quiet...in the earnest hope it would not reappear, the Board neglected its duty."

Even more:

"The most regrettable part of this wretched business was the failure of the present Board to inform the Judicial Inquiry in Lahore that the Australians had not come with clean hands. That the Chairman of the ACB did not insist on full disclosure counts against him and should have led to his resignation."

Match-fixing, many believe, is as damaging to the image of the sport than any other indiscretions, if not more so. If Wisden is to be believed, both Mark Waugh and Shane Warne have admitted to the ACB to accepting bribes.

Writes the editor on page 9 of the 1999 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack:

"...the Australian Cricket Board was finally forced to admit something it had known, and covered up, since February 1995. Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, who had made the original allegations of attempted match fixing against the former Pakistan Captain Salim Malik, had themselves accepted thousand of dollars from an Indian bookmaker..."

Again, on page 24 of Wisden:

"...Waugh was paid $A 6,000 and Warne $A 5,000. The players had admitted this after making their original allegations about Malik to the Australian Cricket Board but the ACB had said nothing about this publicly for almost four years... However, it informed ICC at the time, telling Sir Clyde Walcott, the then Chairman, and David Richards, the Chief Executive, to keep it secret, which they did."

To add insult to injury, Waugh testified at the Malik hearing and spoke loftily about his (Waugh) cricketing ideals and the Pakistani court was much impressed. Later, after the news broke, Judge Qayyum had this to say: "If he (Mark Waugh) did not have a legal obligation, he had a moral duty to bring it to our notice, and it casts doubt on his credibility." Again, page 24: “Pakistani officials were also angered by ICC’s connivance in the Australian cover-up”.

The moral high ground Mr. Roebuck?

The other unseemly aspect of the Aussie way that became increasingly disturbing over the years is the level of sledging. Steve Waugh's leadership condoned and, it seems, provided the ultimate encouragement for a proliferation of such deplorable conduct. Waugh even coined a name for this form of abuse -- mental disintegration.

Aussie sport psychologist, Jeff Bond, argues that this mental disintegration is simply a glorified name for unbecoming conduct that brings the game into disrepute. There is the incident, captured on the stump microphone and aired by Channel Nine, of Shane Warne calling Zimbabwean Stuart Carlisle "a f... arsey c...," after the batsman struck him for two boundaries; of Michael Slater hurling abuses at India's vice captain Rahul Dravid and Umpire Venkatraghavan after the former rightfully stood his ground and a faked appeal for a bump ball was turned down. According to the BBC report, Waugh, at the time, stood stone-faced at mid off with his hands in his pockets.

Matters finally came to a head with the infamous McGrath outburst against the West Indies vice captain, Ramnaresh Sarwan, in Antigua in 2003 and the Australian’s belated attempt to put a spin on it.

Once again, it was Peter Roebuck who wrote that "the rumours about Sarwan's remarks - that they referred to McGrath's ill wife - were incorrect.”

More from Roebuck after that game in Antigua:

"[R]egardless of the result, the Australians have done nothing to enhance their reputations as sportsmen. If victory cannot be achieved without recourse to the sort of antagonism seen in Antigua then it is not worth bothering about. Cricket searched for a champion team and found only an unscrupulous aggressor."

Roebuck proceeded to berate Waugh for failing to act in his capacity as captain to cool tempers:

"Waugh has done many fine things but he does not protect the game that has been his living. Nor did these nasty moments improve Australia's performance."

The Australian Cricket Board (ACB) was also concerned enough that, immediately after the game, the Chief Executive, James Sutherland, telephoned Waugh about this ugly incident involving McGrath. Sutherland chastised Waugh for the poor conduct of the World Champions when a match was not going its way. "What we do agree on is that it's all very well to be playing the game in the right spirit when things are going your way but if things don't go your way, that's when the real test is on," he said. "And if you can't carry yourself in the right fashion, in the true spirit of the game at those times, then perhaps you need to have a good look at yourself," he added.

And so it is with some degree of confusion, we ask the learned Mr. Roebuck, exactly which of his versions of the Aussie Way he was referring to this week?