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Sunrisers Hyderabad win big but Royal Challengers Bengaaluru, Gujarat Titans seal top two spots

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Eshan Malinga had Devdutt Padikkal holing out to deep midwicket [Cricinfo]

Sunrisers Hyderabad [SRH] won, and yet it didn’t feel like a win.  Royal Challengers Bengaluru [RCB] lost, but it didn’t feel like that either. In a nutshell, that’s how Friday night went in Hyderabad as RCB secured a top-two finish – they finished No 1 – despite a 55-run defeat, while SRH remained third.

On the back of half-centuries from Abhishek Sharma, Heinrich Klassen and Ishan Kishan,  SRH posted a monster total of 255, but had to restrict RCB to 166 or below for a chance to move into the top two. Rajat Patidar’s 56, Venkatesh Iyer’s 44 and Krunal Pandya’s unbeaten 41 ensured there were no blushes for RCB even as they finished the league stage with a defeat.

That left the top three teams all on 18 points, with Gujarat Titans sandwiched between the two teams at No. 1 and No. 3. Eventually, it came down to net run-rate to decide which team would go to Qualifier 1, and which team would play the Eliminator.

Going into the game, RCB wanted to win but also wanted to ensure they didn’t slip outside the top two should they lose. After SRH pumped 255 for 4 in 20 overs, the equation became clear – RCB had to avoid losing by 90 or more runs.

The start given by their new opener, Venkatesh, calmed the nerves. He gave Pat Cummins a four-six jab in the first over, and saved his best for the fourth over delivered by left-arm wristspinner Shivang Kumar. He punished Shivang for two sixes in one over, with a boundary sandwiched in between. Venkatesh fell for a 19-ball 44 but by then RCB had already scored 60 in 4.3 overs.

Even though Virat Kohli (15) failed to leave a mark in the game with the bat, a spunky 21 from No. 3 Devdutt Padikkal ensured RCB stayed on course for 166 even if the chase looked to get out of hand. Sakib Hussain,  who delivered 1 for 31 in four overs, was a major reason why RCB could not push on.

Patidar scored his fourth half-century of the season, staying in from the sixth over to the 19th. His 39-ball 56 included crisp boundaries off Eshan Malinga, Cummins and Harshal Patel, but fell to part-timer Travis Head. Krunal stayed till the end with an unbeaten 41 in 31 balls as RCB finished on a commendable 200 for 4 by the end.

Dropped in the sixth, seventh and eighth overs, Abhishek made full use of the chances RCB’s fielders offered him. On a flat surface with no grass, he did not let purple-cap holder Bhuvneshwar Kumar settle. His early boundaries over the off-side against Bhuvneshwar’s awayswingers moved into his takedown of Suyash Sharma’s googly and Romario Shepherd’s seam-up balls.

Abhishek was finally out in the ninth over, but by then his turbo-charged innings had SRH almost touching triple-digits.

Kishan had three fifties against RCB in his last three outings, and on Friday, he made it four in a row with a 46-ball 79. While Abhishek was going, Kishan took his time to score nine off his first ten balls, but then found his groove.

His best shot of the night was probably the leg-side slog towards the bigger boundary against Krunal in the 11th over, a sign that timing and form continued to be on his side. A sixth 50-plus score for Kishan this season also made IPL 2026 his most prolific as a batter. His sweeps, cuts and pulls allowed SRH to pump 73 runs across overs 11 to 15.

Klaasen’s story was similar, starting off with only five runs in nine balls, but one that was unlocked with his takedown of Josh Hazlewood in the 13th over. One six over cow corner and two more over long-on made Hazlewood leak 27. His effortless loft of Bhuvneshwar over extra cover took him close to yet another landmark, and he brought up his sixth half-century of the season in the 16th over. He fell in the 17th over to a low-arm slinger from Krunal for 52, but not before becoming the first player to cross 600 runs while batting at No. 4 or lower in a T20 tournament.

Nitish Kumar Reddy scored a blazing unbeaten 29 in 12 balls to give SRH a late push. He hit Krunal for two sixes in his first three balls in the crease and then deposited Hazlewood for another.

The late flourish took SRH past 250 while also leaving RCB’s senior seam-bowling pair of Bhuvneshwar and Hazlewood ducking for cover. Hazlewood conceded 55 on the night while Bhuvneshwar leaked 51. They both finished the evening wicketless.

Brief scores:
Sunrisers Hyderabad 255 for 4 in 20 overs (Abhishek  Sharma 56, Travis Head 26,  Ishan Kishan 79, Heinrich  Klaasen 51, Nitish Kumar Reddy 29*; Rasikh Salam 2-52, SuyashSharma 1-36, Krunal Pandya 1-24) beat Royal Challengers Bengaluru 200 for 4 in 20 overs (Venkatesh Iyer 44, Virat Kohli 15, Devdutt Padikkal 21, Rajat Patidar 56,  Krunal Pandya 41*, Tim David 15*; Eshan Malinga 2-33, Sakib Hussain 1-31, Travis Head 1-07) by 55 runs

[Cricinfo]



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Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down

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There was no alternative to developing AI, Anthropic boss Dario Amodei said [BBC]

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

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Harmanpreet Kaur and Chamari Athapaththu pose with the trophy [ACC]

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

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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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