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Long wait over for Bangladesh and Darwin as Australia start their long run

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Pat Cummins and Najmul Hossain Shanto pose with the series trophy [Cricinfo]

In so many ways, this series has been a long time coming. Bangladesh have not visited Australia for a Test series in 23 years (and 18 for any bilateral exchange), while Darwin has not hosted a Test for 22. Even on a more micro level, it’s been seven months since Australia’s men played a Test and more than a year since the big four of their bowling attack featured together.

The fact that Bangladesh have waited so long for a series in this country does not reflect particularly well on Cricket Australia, although more recent administrations have started to take a broader view on their role in world cricket. Quite when Bangladesh can expect to return, however, remains uncertain.

There will be various interested parties with fingers crossed for a contest that goes deep into the weekend – perhaps everyone other than the Australia players, who will want to be ruthless as the team begins their epic run of 20, or 21, Tests in the next 12 months and avoid dropping any World Test Championship points. Bangladesh’s second-innings collapse for 54 against a CA XI in the warm-up match did not bode well but, when the coin goes up on Thursday morning, both sides begin on the same score.

Australia are in a fascinating position as a Test side heading into what will be an era-defining stretch. On the one hand, they are successful and settled. But on the other, they also have a number of questions around them. An often referenced one is the age profile of the team – only Cameron Green will be under 30 – particularly when it comes to the fast-bowling group, but they all continue to warrant selection and it would be a tough sell to move them aside with the major series ahead, although rotation is surely inevitable.

The batting order starts the series with some uncertainty. Jake Weatherald faces a huge two weeks in trying to secure his place at the top of the order to stop the revolving door, Green needs to deliver on his talent (a stable spot in the order would help), and Marnus Labuschagne has yet to fully convince he’s back to his best.

That top order may still be challenged by the visiting attack, but would have been more thoroughly examined if fiery quick Nahid Rana had been available. The side strain suffered in Zimbabwe was an agonising blow on so many levels. Bangladesh, who are fourth in the WTC after two wins against Pakistan earlier in the year, and won four in a row including a brace against Ireland before a recent hammering to Zimbabwe, will need the experience of captain Najmul Hossain Shanto and Mushfiqur Rahim to lead the way with the bat. A victory would be a massive upset.

Cameron Green is the youngest member of Australia’s Test side, but he’s not young in international cricket anymore. He’s 37 matches into his career and holds middling averages. It feels as though he is entering a pivotal season, and perhaps even a pivotal couple of months if he’s to play a key role throughout this run of Test cricket. The management is desperate to keep him in the side but the faith will need to be repaid, most importantly with the bat where he should be a central figure in the future. Green has to make sure that’s the case.

A huge amount rests on the shoulders of Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto in a batting order that feels vulnerable. He arrives with a decent 2026 under his belt to date, averaging 46.83 in three matches, and though his overall Test average is a less impressive 33.49, he has shown an ability to convert: of his 15 scores over fifty, nine have become centuries. He showed glimpses of form with 37 in the first innings against the CA XI.

Scott Boland will warm the bench as Australia bring back their famous four for the first time in more than a year as Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon all return. The side is as expected but the batting needs to convince that it can stay together.

Shanto hinted at there being some “niggles” in the Bangladesh camp but confirmed Litton Das was fit to take his place. Two frontline spinners also appear the likely route while Hasan Mahmud’s form for Kent and four wickets in the warm-up match could earn him a spot.

Australia Travis Head, Jake Weatherald, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith,  Cameron Green, Alex Carey (wk), Beau Webster, Pat Cummins (capt), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon,  Josh Hazlewood

Bangladesh (probable) Tanzid Hasan,  Shadman Islam, Mominul Haque,  Najmul Hossain Shanto (capt),  Mushfiqur Rahim, Litton Das (wk), Mehidy Hasan Miraz,  Taijul Islam,  Taskin Ahmed,  Khaled Ahmed/Ebadot Hossain,  Hasan Mahmud



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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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