Australian cricketers and media support Hair

Former Australia captains Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor defended umpire Darrell Hair's integrity in the wake of the Pakistan forfeit row Tuesday, as local media dubbed him "the bravest man in cricket".
Waugh said the Australian official correctly awarded the fourth Test to England Sunday after Pakistan refused to come out after tea in protest at allegations of ball-tampering.
"I definitely agree with that, if they don't go back on the field the Test is over," Waugh told Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper, adding: "No one's bigger than the game."
The 168-Test veteran said Hair could be "stubborn and a bit hard-nosed" but he would not have made a serious charge of ball tampering against Pakistan without good reason.
Hair was at the centre of a storm when he no-balled Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan for chucking at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1995, and Waugh said the umpire would not have taken his latest actions lightly. "He always stands by what he believes so you can't ask for much more from an umpire," he said.
Waugh's predecessor as Australian Test captain Mark Taylor rejected claims Hair was biased against South Asian teams.
"I'm sure he's just doing what he thinks is right," Taylor told Channel Nine television. Former Australian Cricket Board chief executive Graham Halbish said the way Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq was now treated represented a "litmus test" for the International Cricket Council's (ICC) ability to govern the game.
The Australian media also dismissed criticism of Hair. Under the headline "He is the bravest man in cricket", the Telegraph's chief cricket writer Robert Craddock said the powerful bloc of Asian Test-playing nations - Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - would force Hair from the game. "It's a shame," he said. "Cricket needs no-nonsense characters like Hair who keep the game honest." "To his great credit, Darrell Hair is prepared to poke his nose into grubby corners of the cricket world where most of his fellow umpires refuse to go."
The Sydney Morning Herald's Phil Wilkins echoed the sentiment, saying Hair was the one man on the ICC umpiring panel brave enough to take a stand. "Hair is a man of the strictest principle; an official absolutely true to the game; an umpire of the fairest, most unswerving practices," he said.