BENGALURU : Krishnappa Gowtham’s Instagram post on Thursday summed up his last few days. It was a picture of his wife, with whom the Karnataka cricketer got married last week. She looked pleased with a red ball in her hand. The caption read: “Most effective way to do it, happy wife @archanassundar getting her wedding gifts.” Post his wedding, Gowtham has been at his sensational best. The state’s premier spinner wove a web around Tamil Nadu batsmen in their Ranji Trophy clash, scalping 14 wickets to steer his team to victory.
Gowtham has always been among wickets in Ranji Trophy, besides other domestic tournaments . In the last three seasons, the lanky off-spinner has taken 83 wickets in 21 matches. He is one of those spinners who have found success with a simple-but-efficient approach. In an age when spinners have a lot of variations in their armoury — carrom balls, flippers, sliders etc — Gowtham does not come under that bracket.
He instead makes up for that with tight lines and subtle variations in length, all dictated by a solid cricketing brain. “I do depend on variations as well, but it is more to do with the speed and the length at which I bowl; not deliveries like carrom balls or all those things,” said Gowtham.“I don’t believe much in that kind of stuff. I do not think much about anything else apart from bowling one line, at the same spot, time and again. In the longer format, you need to be more traditional.”
The 31-year-old bowls stump-to-stump, an aspect that has contributed to his rise across formats over the years. He probes and asks batsmen questions; a trait that was on full display during the game against Tamil Nadu. Out of his 14 wickets, seven were LBW; enough evidence of his efficiency while attacking the stumps. There were also caught-behinds and clean-bowleds.
There is a sense of enjoyment and patience which one can associate with Gowtham and the red ball. He is calm and composed. Time is not a factor in the longer format, and the Bengaluru man uses that to keep his rhythm going. Even on the final day against Tamil Nadu, he bowled 30 overs on the trot, showing no signs of fatigue. “With the red ball, you get a chance to bowl a lot more. You get to be in the game for long, compared to ODIs and T20s,” explained Gowtham.
“But, yes. There is more time with the red ball. I enjoy bowling long spells. I do enjoy that part of red-ball cricket, where you can bowl longer spells with close-in fielders, putting pressure on the opponents, making batsmen commit mistakes. It’s an art, where you work your wicket out. That is something which I enjoy.”