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Holder and Washington star in Gujarat Titans’ nervy last-over win
The top half of the IPL 2026 points table is an utter logjam.Punjab Kings (PBKS), unbeaten through their first seven games, have now lost two in a row. And the team that beat them on Sunday night, Gujarat Titans (GT) have won three in a row. All around the IPL, teams that had led secure lives in the top four have endured setbacks over the last few days.
And so the big squeeze. PBKS remain at No. 1, but they’re only one point above GT at No. 5.
GT, however, are the only team in the top five with a negative net run rate (NRR). This may have something to do with their style of play: they rely on their bowlers to ensure their batters don’t have to score at the frenetic rates of some other teams, but that means their margins of victory tend to be less emphatic.
On Sunday, their margin was wafer-thin – one ball remaining – despite the fact that they dominated virtually from start to finish. Their Test-match pace trio of Mohammed Siraj, Kagiso Rabada amd Jason Holder bowled hard lengths on a pitch that offered steep bounce and plentiful seam movement from those lengths, and reduced PBKS to 47 for 5. Suryansh Shedge and Marcus Stoinis ensured that PBKS recovered to post 163 for 9, but this was still very much a GT kind of target, perfect for their style of top-order play.
A measured half-century from B Sai Sudarsan laid the perfect platform, but GT’s scoring rate remained somewhere in the region of their original required rate right through their chase. And suddenly, they ended up needing 11 off the final over. Washington Sundar sealed victory with a penultimate-ball six, but on another day, this could have so easily been the story of GT sleepwalking to defeat.
But the major story was this: for the third match in a row, GT pulled off the trademark GT victory. Straightjacketing their oppositions with the ball, and chasing down sub-170 targets with significant contributions from one or two of their top three.
This was a black-soil pitch with a healthy covering of grass, and it was evident from ball one that it would reward bowlers who hammered away on hard lengths. Ball one from Siraj almost produced a chance, with extra bounce leading to a miscued pull from Priyansh Arya that fell just out of reach of Jos Buttler, who had chased from his spot behind the stumps to the edge of the 30-yard circle at backward square leg. Ball two produced the first wicket: a bit of width for Arya to free his arms, but extra bounce once more to take away his control and bring about a slice to deep third.
Siraj struck again with his next ball, going slightly fuller, getting a bit of swing into the left-handed Cooper Connolly to produce an inside-edge to the wicketkeeper.
Rabada matched Siraj’s excellence from the other end, as the two bowled three overs each in the powerplay, beating the bat multiple times as Prabhsimran Singh and Shreyas Iyer struggled to match their usual rates of scoring. Then, Rabada bowled an outstanding sixth over, which included the wicket of Prabhsimran with a 152kph length ball that cramped him for room on the on-the-up punch, and four straight dots to Nehal Wadhera, including one that zipped past the edge and a bouncer that zipped past the helmet. A wicket maiden completed PBKS’ least productive powerplay since the start of IPL 2025: 35 for 3.
There’s no better resource on a trampoline pitch than a towering fast bowler. Holder is four inches taller than the 6’3″ Rabada, and he immediately got in the act in the seventh over, finding Wadhera’s edge with a hard-length ball slanted across him. And when he nipped a back-of-a-length ball back into Shreyas and bowled him off the inside edge in the ninth over, PBKS were five down and in all kinds of strife.
In GT’s previous game against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), the left-arm spinner Manav Suthar didn’t bowl a ball. Given the help the quicks were getting on Sunday, GT may have felt inclined to repeat this, but a wayward 13th over from the left-arm seamer Arshad Khan, which went for 16, may have prompted them to bring on Suthar for the 14th.
And Suthar bowled one of the more forgettable overs of the season. Bowlers often get taken to the cleaners in the IPL even when they bowl reasonably good balls, but this was just an old-fashioned bad over: after starting with a single, he sent down two slot balls, a wide full-toss, a wide long-hop, and another full-toss. Shedge took ruthless toll, going 6, 6, 4, 4, 6. Twenty-seven off that over, and PBKS were suddenly looking at a decent total.
That over was the centrepiece of a 79-run partnership between Shedge and Stoinis. Shedge, who was at one stage batting on 13 off 14 balls, rushed to a 24-ball half-century. He then flicked Rabada for a nonchalant six in the 16th over before falling to Rabada’s extra bounce, caught behind for 57 off 29.
Stoinis held the key to a big finish for PBKS, but Holder forced a miscue out of him with an into-the-pitch cutter from around the wicket in the 18th over. When he followed up with an inducker to bowl Xavier Bartlett comprehensively, PBKS were eight down with 13 balls remaining.
Marco Jansen hit Rashid Khan for a six and four in the final over to haul PBKS past 160, but it wasn’t quite the magnitude of finish they may have hoped for. Only 45 came off their last five overs.
This was an innings of many delectable shots: the high-elbow drive through the covers off Bartlett in the first over, the hooked six over fine leg off Jansen in the sixth, and expert riding of the bounce to cut and carve the ball behind point. But there wasn’t a whole lot of intent to force the pace off balls that weren’t in his hitting zones.
And all of GT’s batters played pretty much this way, with the caveat that this was still an awkward pitch to bat on. Jos Buttler picked off a trademark scooped six over short fine leg, but his 26 consumed 22 balls. Nishant Sindhu, making his IPL debut, fell for 15 off 11. Washington scored 16 off his first 14 balls.
And so, it came to a situation where, after Sai Sudharsan and Impact Player Rahul Tewatia fell in the 15th and 17th overs, GT suddenly came under a bit of pressure.
But with 11 to get off the final over, they found a way to push through. Arshad flicked an almost-perfect Stoinis yorker for four, and then, with three to get off two balls, Washington coolly stepped across his stumps and scooped a full-toss over the fine leg boundary to take GT over the line.
Brief scores:
Gujarat Titans 167 for 6 in 19.5 overs (Sai Sudharsan 57, Jos Buttler 26, Nishant Sindhu 15, Washington Sundar 40*; Arshdeep Singh 2-24, Marco Jansen 1-33, Vyjayakumar Vyshak 2-31, Marcus Stoinis 1-26) beat Punjab Kings 163 for 9 in 20 overs (Prabhsimran Singh 15, Shreyas Iyer 19, Suryansh Shedge 57, Marcus Stoinis 40, Marco Jansen 20; Mohammed Siraj 2-28, Kagiso Rabada 2-22, Jason Holder 4-24, Rashid Khan 1-32) by four wickets
[Cricinfo]
The United States has launched strikes on targets in southern Iran, the US military has said, as Tehran’s top negotiators gather in Qatar for talks aimed at reaching a peace deal with Washington.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out the “self-defence strikes” to protect US troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.
“Targets included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines,” Navy Captain Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, said in a statement to Al Jazeera late on Monday.
“US Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.”
CENTCOM did not provide further details on the strikes.
The latest attacks come despite there being a ceasefire officially in place between the US and Iran since April 8.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said the strikes are likely to derail the ongoing negotiations to end the US-Israel war on Iran.
“There is very limited information coming from the US side; we don’t know the extent of the operation. It’s hard to say whether this skirmish is unusual,” he said.
“But Trump is keen to move forward with negotiations and solidify a peace deal.”
Earlier on Monday, a high-level Iranian delegation arrived in Doha to discuss roadblocks to a permanent peace deal.
The arrival of the delegation, which includes Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, came as US President Donald Trump said that peace talks were “proceeding nicely”, even as he insisted that he would not agree to anything less than a substantial deal.
“It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
[Aljazeera]
Pope Leo XIV has called for the “disarming” of artificial intelligence (AI), warning that “new forms of slavery” are tied to its rise.
The Catholic Church leader warned on Monday against “a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets,” driven by “the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance”.
His concerns regarding AI were presented in his first encyclical, titled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), in person at the Vatican. Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pontiff to the church’s 1.4 billion members.
Leo insisted that ownership of AI data must not be left solely in private hands, called for policymakers to protect the rights of workers and keep children safe from the technology, and urged the cooling of competition between AI companies.
“What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” Leo said.
The Catholic leader continued by calling for “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility”.
“AI now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death,” he said. “Like nuclear energy, it must be at the service of all and of the common good.”
Monday’s highly anticipated text, spanning nearly 43,000 words, has been in the works nearly since Leo’s election as pope a little more than a year ago.
Pope Leo presented the encyclical alongside AI experts, including Christopher Olah, co-founder of US giant Anthropic.
Anthropic is embroiled in a legal battle with the United States military after opposing the use of its technology for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance.
At the presentation, Olah said AI companies operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing”.
He welcomed input from outside actors like the Catholic Church to “push events in a better direction”, saying that “the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community”.
Olah highlighted three areas he said required urgent attention: the risk of widespread job losses, the need to ensure that AI benefits are extended worldwide, and the unresolved question of how to interpret increasingly complex and sometimes opaque system behaviour.
In the encyclical, Leo also sounded the alarm over AI-directed weaponry, saying it was “not permissible to entrust lethal” decisions to tech.
Leo has repeatedly clashed with the White House over the US-Israel war on Iran and its use of religion to justify conflict.
The “just war” theory, espoused recently by the administration of US President Donald Trump, was “outdated”, Leo wrote, adding that “no algorithm can make war morally acceptable”.
[Aljazeera]
The Sri Lanka Cricket selection panel has handed the white-ball captaincy to Kusal Mendis for the upcoming all-format tour of the West Indies next month. Dhananjay de Silva will continue to lead the side in the two Tests.
Kusal Mendis takes over the ODI captaincy from Charith Asalanka, who was named in the 16-man squad, while Kamindu Mendis was named vice-captain. In T20Is, Kusal Mendis takes over the leadership from Dasun Shanaka, who led the side until the recent T20 World Cup, where Sri Lanka failed to make the knockouts. While Shanaka retained his place in the 16-man T20I squad, Asalanka did not.
Wanidu Hasaranga is set to return to action – named in the ODI and T20I squads – after his injury during the T20 World Cup has kept him off the field since early February. He tore his left hamstring at the time and missed the ongoing IPL after that for Lucknow Super Giants.
The tour starts with three ODIs from June 3 to 8 followed by the three T20Is on June 11, 13 and 14. The two Tests will be played at the Viv Richards Stadium in North Sound from June 25 to 29 and July 3 to 7.
Sri Lanka Test squad:
Dhananjaya de Silva (capt), Kamindu Mendis, Pathum Nissanka, Lahiru Udara, Nishan Madushka, Dinesh Chandimal, Pasindu Sooriyabandara, Sonal Dinusha, Kusal Mendis, Milan Rathnayake, Prabath Jayasuriya, Ramesh Mendis, Asitha Fernando, Vishwa Fernando, Lahiru Kumara, Isitha Wijesundara, Kasun Rajitha
Sri Lanka ODI squad:
Kusal Mendis (capt), Kamindu Mendis (vice-capt), Pathum Nissanka, Kamil Mishara, Pavan Rathnayake, Janith Liyanage, Charith Asalanka, Milan Rathnayake, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dunith Wellalage, Maheesh Theekshana, Dushmantha Chameera, Dilshan Madushanka, Eshan Malinga, Asitha Fernando, Pramod Madushan
Sri Lanka T20I squad:
Kusal Mendis (capt), Kamindu Mendis (vice-capt), Pathum Nissanka, Kamil Mishara, Pavan Rathnayake, Lasith Croospulle, Dasun Shanaka, Milan Rathnayake, Dunith Wellalage, Wanindu Hasaranga, Maheesh Theekshana, Dushmantha Chameera, Dilshan Madushanka, Eshan Malinga, Binura Fernando, Nuwan Thushara
(Cricinfo)
US military launches strikes on southern Iran amid talks in Qatar
Pope says AI must be ‘disarmed’ to prevent domination, exclusion, and death
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