Shane Watson has apologised to fans after hackers published a series of photos of scantily-clad women on his personal Instagram.

The Australian cricket star fell victim for the second time in two weeks after racist and fat-shaming posts were seen on his Twitter account.

The 38-year-old all-rounder, who played 59 Tests, unintentionally inundated his 1.2 million Instagram followers with a score of bizarre photos uploaded by a hacker on Tuesday.

His bio was changed to "JOIN SHADOW REALM, LINK IN BIO! FOR FREE NUDES", while raunchy pictures of women were made public.

One cropped picture of a man wearing a black printed T-shirt displaying the Joker was captioned "I'm the hacker."

The Instagram takeover also saw several posts attempting to persuade Watson's followers to add two Snapchat accounts for a "free shoutout."

The hack came days after a similar revamp of his Twitter profile saw his profile picture changed to a woman, and his bio reading "FREE DA GUYS".

Watson's timeline was also flooded with unauthorised fat-shaming tweets and vile slurs that referred to indigenous Australians as "simply not human."

The Queenslander, who now plays for Chennai Super Kings, managed to wipe his profile and remove the content and took to Instagram to apologise to fans for what they saw.

"Unfortunately I've had to deal with another one of my social media accounts getting hacked," Watson said.

"I really apologise for the images that were posted on my Instagram account. They're disgraceful images and videos.

"Some people have just got way too much time on their hands to go and try and disrupt someone's day.

"But I really apologise. It's been another lesson learnt, to ensure all my social media is as watertight as it possibly can be from a safety point of view. Hopefully no one can get in to any more of my accounts."

This article was originally published by The Sun and reproduced with permission