By Dan Isaacs BBC News, Islamabad

Mr Hair (second left) offered to resign for a cash settlement

"This is shocking news", former Pakistan captain Intikhab Alam said of the revelation of Mr Hair's letter to the International Cricket Council.

"The worst thing to happen in umpiring history," another former captain, Javed Miandad, said.

You could hardly say this episode is being taken lightly here.

Front page news

The story broke late in the evening Pakistan time, but newspapers still managed to get the story splashed over the front pages.

The News decided to portray the latest twist in the saga as more dramatic than a film thriller: "Move over Hitchcock, Hair's the deal: Give me $500,000 and I'll quit."

And Mr Hair has also been the subject of caricatures in many papers.

There is negative feeling towards Mr Hair on the streets too: "He acts like a policeman in the ground. He has an ego problem, and I think he should just go home, but only after he's faced a trial for his conduct," says one man.

Shifting focus

The bottom line is that Pakistanis believe their team has now been exonerated from all wrong-doing and that the revelation of Mr Hair setting financial terms for his resignation simply proves that his judgement is as poor off the field as it is on it.

It is now time, says former Pakistani fast bowler, Sarfraz Nawaz, for Mr Hair to come out and apologise not only to the team, but to the whole Pakistani nation.

But the most important thing to come out of this, Pakistanis believe, is that it clears the way for the forthcoming one-day series against England to go ahead without the cloud of suspicion hanging over Pakistan's cricketers.

Of course, the saga is far from over yet. There is still an official hearing to come with Pakistan's captain Inzamam ul-Huq facing charges of ball-tampering and bringing the game into disrepute.

But surely, people here are saying, it is time to drop the accusations and focus on the cricket matches ahead.