All-rounder of the bowling department Krishnappa Gowtham happened to be associated with the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) team for a total of three seasons of the Indian Premier League (IPL) from 2022 to 2024. He, therefore, came out to announce his retirement today (December 22). He is 37 years old and besides LSG, has also been a part of the Punjab Kings and Rajasthan Royals franchises in the IPL.
Gowtham had been part of the Mumbai Indians’ squad for one season after being bought by the IPL giants in the auction of 2018 but was never fielded. Interestingly, in the IPL 2021 auction, Gowtham was the highest-paid uncapped player as the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) spent a massive INR 9.25 crores on his services. However, against the odds, CSK decided not to field him for any match that season and he spent the entire season warming the bench.
Coincidentally, even though he did not get to play any IPL match, Gowtham was able to perform well enough to be selected for international cricket and thus made his ODI debut for India against Sri Lanka in July that year, which unfortunately was his only match for India. Besides, he has been getting repeated call-ups from India A team.
However, the player was unable to attract any buyers in the mega auction of last year and thus his name was not there even in IPL 2026 auction resulting mainly from the fact that age was not on his side and his stocks had gone down.
Krishnappa Gowtham was a name everyone knew in domestic cricket
The Karnataka cricketer, who made his Ranji Trophy debut in 2012, reached a turning point in 2016 when he took 18 wickets in the first three matches. The next year, he opened up a new side to his game by hitting his first hundred in first-class cricket. In the end, he had FC record of 224 wickets in 59 matches while scoring 1419 runs with a century and five fifties. In List A, he took 95 scalps in 68 games, which included four 4-wicket hauls and two 5-wicket hauls with an addition of 630 runs with the bat.
Nonetheless, his capacity for power-hitting in the lower order and reliable off-spin led him to be primarily considered as a T20 player. In IPL, Krishnappa Gowtham participated in 36 matches, gathering 21 wickets and scoring 237 runs. In T20s, his overall stats amounts to 74 wickets at an average of 28.06 and 734 runs at a strike rate of 158.18.
Download the CricInformer app
Take CricInformer with you. Get our app for cricket news and updates on your phone.