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Dwarshuis, middle-order might power Australia to 5-0 sweep
Australia put on a final display of their batting power to secure a 5-0 T20I whitewash over West Indies. Tim David and Mitchell Owen launched seven sixes between them, as the overall series tally ended as the second-highest for a bilateral series, with Aaron Hardie then finishing the chase after Akeal Hosein had kept West Indies’ hopes alive.
The victory was set up by an excellent performance with the ball after Mitchell Marsh had won his fifth toss – making it all eight for Australia on the tour – and declining the opportunity to have his side set a target. They claimed three wickets in the powerplay to set West Indies back and kept chipping away each time a stand threatened to turn the game. Shimron Hetmyer and Jason Holder added 47 for the fifth wicket and the former went to his first T20I fifty since August 2023 but fell the ball after reaching the landmark.
Nathan Ellis was again excellent in the closing overs, including a very sharp piece of work off his own bowling to end the innings as he under-armed into the stumps, while Adam Zampa claimed a wicket in his 100th T20I – the fourth Australia men’s player to reach that milestone.
Australia’s powerplay was hectic as Holder struck twice in his first over, Mitchell Marsh was cleaned up by a beauty from Alzarri Joseph and David bludgeoned 30 off 12 balls with four sixes all inside five overs. From there, the asking rate was never an issue, it was just a question of whether West Indies could keep taking wickets. Their chances took a blow when Joseph limped out of the attack and while Hosein was excellent, there were not enough runs to work with in the end.
Ben Dwarshuis is building a handy record for Australia as the left-arm pace option in this attack. He may well have pushed himself to second in the pecking order ahead of Spencer Johnson, who missed this series through injury, and behind Mitchell Starc.
Having been rested for the fourth match, he returned with a brace of early inroads, responding to a pair of boundaries from Shai Hope by spearing one through him, then having Brandon King taken at midwicket to bag West Indies’ in-form openers.
His figures were dented in his final over that cost 19, including a big full toss to Hetmyer which resulted in a free hit that was sent for six. Next ball, Hetmyer went to his half-century from 30 balls but couldn’t stay to finish the innings when he was well caught by Sean Abbott running in from long-off to give Dwarshuis his third wicket.
It wasn’t quite as memorable a night for Glenn Maxwell. He dropped a sitter at mid-on to reprieve King (although it did not prove costly) and would later collect a first-ball duck when he edged Holder to short third. However, he did have one key moment when he won his brief match-up with Sherfane Rutherford as the left-hand batter, who has struggled for form since last year’s T20 World Cup, was threatening to turn the innings around.
Rutherford had moved to 35 off 16 balls, lifting West Indies from 32 for 3 inside the powerplay, when he exposed the stumps to Maxwell against a delivery that slid on. He was aiming too square with his stroke and the ball cannoned into middle stump. With one of the left-hand batters gone, Maxwell’s work with the ball was done for the night.
It is pretty much all-out aggression for Australia with the bat. After Maxwell’s early departure – courtesy of a juggling catch by Jediah Blades – Josh Inglis missed a reverse scoop first ball and collected two boundaries before finding mid-on in the same Holder over. Marsh, who has had a lean series, found the boundary twice off the middle and once off the inside edge before Joseph produced a terrific delivery to nip past the inside edge to leave Australia 25 for 3 in the third.
David’s response was to take 16 off four balls against Holder then two further sixes against Joseph as he threatened a repeat of the record-breaking 37-ball hundred in the third match. But for once, he couldn’t get enough elevation on an attempted six as he was well taken at deep square leg.
Cameron Green, later named Player of the Series, was shaping as though he would finish another chase but found long-off with 30 still needed to give West Indies a glimmer. However, Hardie produced a composed hand and by the time Hosein removed Dwarshuis it was too late.
Brief scores:
Australia 173 for 7 in 17 overs (Mitchell Marsh 14, Josh Inglis 10, Cameron Green 32, Tim David 30, Mitchell Owen 37, Aaron Hardie 28*; Jason Holder 2-36, Alzarri Joseph 2-21, Akeal Hosein 3-17) beat West Indies 170 in 19.4 overs (Brandon King 11, Sherfane Rutherford 35, Shimron Hetmyer 52, Jason Holder20. Mathew Forde 15, Akeal Hosein 11; Aaron Hardie 1-39, Ben Dwarshuis 3-41, Sean Abott 1-30, Nathan Ellis 2-32, Glenn Maxwell 1-06, Adam Zampa 1-20) by three wickets
[Cricinfo]
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Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down
The head of AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down and to be closely monitored.
In an essay, Dario Amodei said developing AI was not in question, but the risks associated with it were “serious” and companies and governments must be given time to address them.
The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, have both said they agree with Amodei.
There have been growing concerns recently about the technology’s potential risks. An AI researcher who left Anthropic this week told the BBC that “if we don’t slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future”.
Jacob Coxon told Laura Kuenssberg that people working at AI companies were “genuinely frightened… genuinely concerned about the fate of humanity in the next two years”.
“It’s not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction,” Coxon said.
“Many of the people who are sort of deep in the weeds on actually coding the thing believe that there is like a greater than ten percent chance, or even greater. Some smaller, but they all have different numbers for a probability that humans might die. And they all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology.”
In Amodei’s essay, called We Must Pace the Frontier and made public on Saturday, he proposed a three-point plan that includes independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed, industry-wide regulation and global regulation.
As his proposal made the rounds, even competitors voiced support for the idea of third-party monitors who could evaluate the safety of models as they are developed.
“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X. He called independent evaluators “a great idea.”
In a new interview with Fortune Magazine, Altman had sounded similar safety concerns, saying standards were “not at a place” to push AI capabilities much further.
He added that he believed AI beyond human control is “absolutely” possible.
Elon Musk meanwhile said the Anthropic boss was “right”.
The warnings have prompted calls to action, but US President Donald Trump has so far rejected such fears, saying on Thursday he was concerned “if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position”.
Cyber-security concerns have grown as new models have exhibited more and more powerful hacking capabilities.
Anthropic withheld its Mythos model from public use when it was announced in April that it could independently escape the testing environment, known as the sandbox.
In the run-up to the release of its most recent Astra model, OpenAI cited cybersecurity concerns as it explained it had paused certain aspects of the model’s development.
Safety has also taken centrestage in the rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI.
Amodei, who had previously worked as a vice president at OpenAI, has said he co-founded Anthropic in 2021 so he could build safer and more trusted AI models.
In his essay, Amodei pointed out that AI had advanced “drastically faster” including its “ability to build the next generation of AI” – and mentioned an incident involving rival OpenAI which has revealed that agents conducted cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack in July.
The OpenAI agents had “essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective”, Amodei said. OpenAI has said it is slowing down training of certain advanced AI models and tools as a result.
Amodei called for “building AI at a balanced rate that aims to ensure its safety while still achieving its benefits”.
This would not mean “halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third party evaluators to confirm this”.
He was committing Anthropic to this “unilaterally” – as well as calling on governments “to require other frontier companies to match”.
Amodei said he recognised that regulation might not be able to keep up with the pace of AI, and therefore called on AI companies to “voluntarily work together to set standard” in parallel with regulation.
The Anthropic CEO went on to address the impact that a slowdown would have on the industry and competition with leading developers worldwide, particularly China.
“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei said.
This would have to be done in a co-ordinated manner “without sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI”. Any slowdown would have to be limited, he said, to avoid allowing China to pull ahead.
He urged the US government to take measures so that US companies’ AI chips could not be sold to China – or the technology shared with authoritarian countries.
His former employee, Jacob Coxon, told the BBC, however, that the initiative to slow down must go beyond the US – “there’ll need to be some sort of co-ordinated slowdown with China if we’re going to avoid a race at an international scale”.
Amodei’s post has prompted a wide range of responses.
Clement Delangue, the CEO of the AI platform Hugging Face, said he was launching a new project called the Open Alignment Initiative, adding he wanted to be among “embedded evaluators” that Amodei proposed could be part of a solution.
Hugging Face was hacked by OpenAI agents earlier this year prompting an outcry over AI safety.
“Let’s make AI safer by making it more transparent,” Delangue wrote on X.
Elon Musk also voiced his support, writing that “Dario is right”.
Musk, whose SpaceXAI makes the controversial chatbot Grok, once called Anthropic “evil” but has changed his tone since signing a $15bn deal to sell compute capacity to Anthropic in May.
However some observers suggested that Amodei’s post was less about safety than about consolidating control over AI technology.
“Dario makes the case to stop open source and concentrate enormous technological and economic power with Anthropic,” wrote Chamath Palihapitiya, investor and co-host of the tech podcast “All-In”.
Notions of slowing down or even pausing AI development have long been met with such cynicism in certain corners of Silicon Valley, with critics accusing leading AI developers of hyping their technology as a marketing ploy.
Anthropic and OpenAI are both reportedly preparing for potentially record-setting initial public offerings.
[BBC]
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It’s spin vs spin as India and Sri Lanka battle for Asia Cup title
If spin is to decide the Women’s T20 Asia Cup final, both India and Sri Lanka have plenty to call upon. India’s spin attack, led by Deepti Sharma, has taken 26 wickets in the tournament, the most by a side. Sri Lanka are next with 25. That makes it seem like a spin vs spin and more spin kind of title contest.
On the plus side for India is that they have appeared well-rounded on the whole. Smriti Sharma and Shafali Verma have scored the bulk of the runs.
Sri Lanka, by contrast, have had to fight for momentum with the bat on the slow Dubai pitches. They were 33 for 4 in the semi final against Pakistan before Hrshitha Samarawickrema and Kavisha Dilhari revived and then completed the chase. Prior to that, they were 44 for 5 against Bangladesh and had to depend on Samarawickrama’s composed knock to seal their semi-final spot. They were also 45 for 5 against Indonesia in the league stage, before Nilakshi Silva lifted them.
That batting order has looked shaky. Chamari Athapaththu allying just 63 runs from four innings and Imesha Dulani 64 from four innings is a concern. And India’s bowling – quick bowler Nandani Sharma has been in good form too – might be tougher to handle than what Sri Lanka have faced so far.
India’s recent record against Sri Lanka also makes them favourites. They swept the five-match T20I series in December 2025 at home, and have won nine of their last ten T20Is against them.
But Sri Lanka’s one victory in that stretch came in the biggest game of all: the 2024 Asia Cup final in Dambulla, when they chased down 166 with eight wickets to spare to win the title.
That means Sri Lanka have both a challenge and a cause for optimism. They will need their batters to withstand Nandani and India’s spin trio – Deepti, N Shree Charani and Prema Rawat – and find a way to build partnerships, rather than leave too much for the middle and lower-middle order to do.
India have the balance and form while Sri Lanka, the defending champions, know better than most that a final can reset the equation. Not to forget, despite their struggles with the bat, Sri Lanka have an all-win record in the Asia Cup so far, the same as India.
Shafali Verma has made fast starts a recurring theme, scoring 168 runs in four matches at an impressive strike rate of 169.69. Two of her knocks have been 64s, and she has shown little sign of taking her foot off the accelerator. In the final, how she sets up the innings could be crucial.
Sri Lanka have found ways to recover from early collapses, with different players stepping up at different stages. But they need their talisman, Chamari Athapaththu, to come to the fore in the final. Athapaththu has made an impact with the ball – she is the tournament’s joint-highest wicket-taker – but her batting is yet to click. She has crossed 30 only once in four matches, in the opener against UAE. A noteworthy contribution with the bat, to go with her threat with the ball, could give Sri Lanka the spark they need against India.
India have fielded an unchanged XI in the tournament so far and, barring injuries, should do the same.
India Women (probable): Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Pratika Rawal, Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), Richa Ghosh (wk), Bharti Fulmali, Deepti Sharma, Prema Rawat, Kranti Gaud, N Shree Charani, Nandani Sharma
Sri Lanka have used 14 of their 17 players. In the semi-final against Pakistan, they left out Vishmi Gunaratne and Chethana Vimukthi for Hasini Perera and Mithali Ayodhya, which might be their ideal XI.
Sri Lanka Women (probable): Imesha Dulani, Chamari Athapaththu (capt), Sanjana Kavindi, Harsthitha Samarawickrama, Hasini Perera, Kavisha Dilhari, Nilakshika Silva, Kaushini Nuthyangana (wk), Sugandika Kumari, Chamudi Praboda, Mithali Ayodhya
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ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi’ departs Colombo
The Italian Naval Vessel ‘ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi’ departed the Port of Colombo today, 12 September 2026, after completing a replenishment stop for logistics and services.
During the ship’s stay, the Commanding Officer of ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi, Captain Marco GUERRIERO, called on the Commander Western Naval Area, Rear Admiral Harsha De Silva, at the Western Naval Command Headquarters.
Members of the visiting crew also toured several tourist attractions across the Colombo area during their port call.
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