About Straight Bat
The monthly magazine, Straight Bat was started in January 1997. A brain-child of the founder Shri. S. R. Jagannathan, ably supported by Shri. A. R. Sundaravardan & Shri. R. Ramachandran, the magazine was one of its kind, dedicated exclusively to the game of cricket. It was started as a printed copy and circulated free, amongst the members of TNCA and the cricketing fraternity. The magazine had a circulation of about 300 copies every month. The magazine carried articles by renowned writers of yesteryears who were stalwarts of the journalism world: Raju Barathan, R. Mohan, K. N. Prabhu, R. Sriman among others.
History
Shri. S R Jagannathan started his club Egmore Excelsiors in the year 1946. This was a first division team. SRJ (Jaggu as he was fondly called), was the Captain & Secretary of the team and was also one of the senior most members of the TNCA until his demise in 2013. Many players who played for Egmore Excelsiors played for the state:
A.K.Sarangapani, J.Ramakrishnan & M. Bala Krishnan, etc.
Historical Moment
On its first and second anniversary of publishing, Straight Bat honoured Shri. Kapil Dev & Shri. Sunil Gavaskar for their achievements in cricket. Shri. Sunil Gavaskar was presented a memento – a silver bat engraved with the 34 test centuries. Shri. Kapil Dev was honoured with a Navaratnam gold ring.
Keeping with the times and to reach a larger audience, Straight Bat decided to go green and will now be available as a website with enhanced offerings.