Johannesburg, Dec. 4 : Cricket South Africa CEO Gerald Majola has said that the controversial selection policy on coloured players is set to be scrapped in three years after the resounding success within the national side, which now fields top performing non-white players ranked among the world''s best.

Plans have been made to continue the "target transformation policy" - often referred to as a "quota system" - for the next three years before discarding it for merit-based selection.

"The goal is to get merit-based selection at all levels of cricket," Majola told the Sydney Morning Herald last night.

Johannesburg - Two South African Nobel Peace Prize laureates have petitioned President Kgalema Motlanthe to establish a commission of inquiry into a controversial multibillion-dollar arms deal, The Star newspaper reported Wednesday.

In a letter dated December 1 and delivered by hand to Motlanthe's Cape Town office on Tuesday, former president FW de Klerk and archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu called on the president to appoint the commission by December 10.

Johannesburg, Dec. 3 : South African tearaway Dale Steyn appears intent on exacting revenge upon the Australian side that punished him during his Proteas limited-overs debut three years ago.

Steyn is still haunted by his first match in South African colours, during which Phil Jaques thrashed him to all corners of Melbourne''s Telstra Dome.

Clearly rattled by the Jaques onslaught, the then 22-year-old was removed from the attack after just five overs, but not before he had conceded 58 runs, including seven no-balls.

"I look back on that game as probably the most important of my career," Steyn told the Herald.

Johannesburg - The nine South African cities hosting 2010 World Cup matches will bear the brunt of a 3.2-billion-rand (315 million dollars) cost overrun in the construction and upgrading of stadiums for the event, Business Day newspaper reported Tuesday.

The local organizers of the World Cup have been warning since July that the stadiums are likely to overshoot the original budget by more than 3 billion rand.

Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile confirmed the amount of the overrun in a written reply to a question in parliament from the opposition Democratic Alliance.