Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Nasim Ashraf confirmed that a letter had been sent to the ICC asking them to investigate Koertzen's comments, as Pakistan wanted a logical conclusion to the issue.

"We are concerned that an elite panel umpire could say such a thing. We hope the ICC will look into it," Ashraf said.

Australian umpire Darrell Hair, during the hearing of his racial discrimination case in the central employment tribunal in London, said in his witness testimony that Koertzen had in March expressed his pleasure at Pakistan being knocked out of the World Cup.

Hair has said that Koertzen told him on phone after exchanging pleasantries, "That's great news, those cheats can now go home."

Hair surprisingly withdraw his case from the tribunal on Tuesday and agreed to work with ICC on a rehabilitation programme over the next six months.

Hair is contracted to the ICC until March 2008 when the ICC Executive Board will decide if he can be given matches involving full Test playing nations.

Ashraf said he was happy at Hair withdrawing his case.

"I am happy because it vindicates the stand of the ICC Executive Board that there was never any racial discrimination involved in the decision taken against him last year by the Board," he stated.

Ashraf said Hair was not given assignments to supervise matches of full Test playing nations because of his poor judgement and behaviour.

Hair's suspension was the fallout of last year's Oval Test between Pakistan and England when he accused the visitors of ball tampering which led to captain Inzamam-ul-Haq and his team refusing to carry on the match in protest.

Hair awarded the match to England but later an ICC adjudicator cleared Pakistan of ball tampering charges and banned Inzamam for four matches for bringing the game into disrepute.

The adjudicator also accused Hair of overstepping his authority and Pakistan filed an official protest with the ICC charging Hair with several counts of violating the umpires' code of conduct.

Pakistan had moved the ICC to remove Hair from the elite panel.

Ashraf declined to comment on whether Pakistan would accept Hair's restoration as a Test umpire insisting he could not speculate at this moment.

"Let us see what happens it is too early to speculate."

However, sources in the Board confirmed that Pakistan was not happy at the chance given to Hair to restore himself as a Test umpire and would not accept him back on duty.