After most of the IPL has been completed, the semi-finals are on the horizon, my favourite team, Kolkata Knight Riders, have almost a zero chance of getting to the semi-finals.

I am majorly disappointed as they actually started the tournament off extremely well. Dave Whatmore has a right to be terribly annoyed with the team. I think there were several problems, especially with team selection, which led to the horrible ending. Key players like Langeveldt and Hodge were left out even though McCullum was/is in terrible form.

Another issue, seen throughout the tournament, is the fact Gayle and Ganguly open. Although they have been successful, in my opinion, they have not used the initial 6 over powerplay to their advantage; hence making large scores virtually impossible. They needed to open with much more explosive batsmen, maybe a mistake?

Really, they can’t change what has happened now, and with everyone’s 3 year contract coming to an end the whole team will change for next year’s IPL. Let’s hope SRK has something better to cheer about; maybe a good team?

While I wandered around the internet, I decided to search for some good cricket games to play online. I found the usual StickCricket, but wanted something more involved. Through a bit of searching I came across a fantastic game called Howzat.

It’s a real-time 3D cricket simulation which is completely online. You simply register and create your team based upon a current international team. Then just start playing and built up experience points in order to level up.You also gain achievement points for things like winning, scoring three consecutive boundaries or for a hat-trick. These points can then be used to help your players level up.

When playing, you can hit strokes all around the ground and the keys required are limited. In order to help you bat you have a timing bar at the side to show if you are playing your shots early or too late. While bowling you can set the speed and swing/spin of the ball in order to trap the opponent.

The best thing is that you are playing against someone else somewhere in the world; this for me makes it that little bit special. It provides good entertainment and is pretty realistic for an online game. I am very pleased to have found it and can’t wait for further updates of it to be made!

Today during the KKR game against Dehli, which KKR have unfortunately lost, Hussey took this fantastic catch:

Well, Kolkata Knight Riders weren’t doing well at all. They had lost their last 3 games mainly because they weren’t getting enough runs on the board. Today was an important game against the Kings XI Punjab, who would push Kolkata to the bottom of the table if they won.

Ganguly won the toss and decided to get his team into bat, on what seemed a fairly good wicket. There were many expectations from the opening pair of Gayle and Ganguly, but after a few good shots Gayle was caught in the deep. Ganguly carried on batting while another team member came and went. Finally a partnership was built up between Ganguly and Tiwary. Although they weren’t scoring a huge number of runs, they were keeping the scoreboard ticking and that was important.

Finally after the strategic timeout, the KKR team must have had a change of heart and they immediately stared trying to push the run rate up. This was much needed as KKR had lost their last few games because of the fact they couldn’t get enough runs. Ganguly crossed a half-century and seems to be getting into some form. He kept trying but his wicket fell.

A few more wickets tumbled but Tiwary stuck out till the end and smashed 2 sixes and 2 fours in the last over to push the score past 180. This would obviously be a tough total for the Kings XI, but they had a long batting line up, stretching down to bowlers like Chawla.

KKR got an early breakthrough with inform batsman Bopara being caught, unlucky, in an LBW decision. Yuvraj however seemed threatening while Bisla on the other end started to smash the ball hard. They started pushing the runs up, with some VERY sloppy fielding by the KKR players (namely Dinda, who had had his bowling punished already).

Agarkar had some disciplined bowling and the run rate for the Kings kept pushing up, with regular wickets falling. Eventually the task was too far ahead of them and even the brilliance of Irfan Pathan couldn’t do anything about it. KKR had quite a convincing win, but only because they made enough runs.

Despite the win, there are a few things that Kolkata have to take from this game. The first being that they have to improve their fielding. Their catching may be fantastic, but their ground fielding is terrible. Dinda was having a horrible time, maybe issues with confidence, but even other players were struggling to get down and stop the bowl (many boundaries were given due to this). Another thing they must sort out is their batting line up. After Gayle was sent back to the pavilion, they sent in an inexperienced batsman (Mandeep) and really they should have sent someone else like Hussey who would help the run rate tick over more.

Overall, a good performance for KKR which pushes them to 5th place, with the tournament still wide open. Hopefully they can carry this success on to the next game!

The Indian Premier League started it’s third season today. I am a keen fan of the Kolkata Knight Riders, despite the fact they are pretty poor. They have an excellent team on paper, but I think their management was their downfall.

Having just watched the opening game between the Deccan Chargers and the Kolkata Knight Riders, I can safely say I am extremely excited for the games to come. Kolkata won in fantastic style and thank god for that! (it seems that the change in coach with Wasim Akram and Dav Whatmore did it’s job).

Kolkata started off quite shaky, with two wickets down with zero runs on the board. However, things started to stabalise, although two further wickets fell. Thankfully, Matthews and Shah (new in from the Mumbai Indians) got the team where they should be. They both made great half-centuries and smacked a fair number of sixes taking KKR to 161/4.

The Chargers seemed quite good to start off with, with Gilchrist getting them rolling. However, wickets started to fall at regular intervals and eventually the Deccan Chargers were struggling. There was some resistance in between with a few fours and the odd six, but it was not enough and they eventually had to bat out the 50 overs remaining 11 runs short of the target leaving KKR with a victory in the first game!!!

I can’t wait to see the other games and, even if KKR go downhill, my support was completely with them. They played excellently with great batting, bowling and , although there were a fwe dropped catches, great fielding near the end!

Scrubs, as well as being a very popular TV show, has been known to have some of the best background music. I’ve found so many new songs just by watching scrubs, but here is the five songs I consider to be the best.

The Fray – “How To Save A Life” (Cox’s patients die)

5. Colin Hay – Overkill

Season 2, Episode 1: Appears throughout the episode, playing on JDs mind.

4. Sideways – Citizen Cope

Season 5, Episode 4: At the end of the episode, when we see that Kelso does feel pain when a patient dies, and that he hasn’t got a heart of stone.

3. In the Sun – Joseph Arthur

Season 5, Episode 5: This is when Jack is being baptised, and Cox decides to turn up to see it.

2. Winter – Joshua Radin

Season 3, Episode 14: During Ben’s funeral, when Dr Cox realises what has actually happened – an incredibly well made episode.

1. How to Save A Life – The Fray

Season 5, Episode 20: Dr Cox loses 3 transplant patients and blames himself for their deaths. I think this is one of the best Scrubs episode, especially at the end. The music creates such a good atmosphere and along with John McGinley’s fantastic acting it makes the perfect ending.

There are lots of other fantastic songs used in the show, but these are the five which really stood out to me!

I thought it was time to start a blog about the best things I could find. So here it is, etcworld. there will be a whole variety of entries here, from gaming, news, technology and sport. anything interesting I find will be put right up here.

So, stick around