Spinners crucial in T20s, need to have variations, feels Amit Mishra

New Delhi: Leading India leg-spinner Amit Mishra feels a tweaker needs to have "quality" to be successful in Twenty20 cricket, a format which predominantly weighs in favour of a batsman.

Even though T20 is regarded as a batsman's game, spinners have unexpectedly asserted their dominance in the format and Mishra feels a tweaker needs to have variations in his armoury.

"Spinners play a very crucial part in T20. Besides stopping runs I always try to pick up wickets because it can put pressure on the opposition.

"You need to have quality to be successful as a spinner in T20. By quality I mean you need to have variations and need to know when to use them. So I feel if you have quality you have more chances of becoming successful," Mishra, who will spearhead Delhi Daredevils spin attack in IPL 10, said at a media session today.

"You need to have a lot of variations. As a spinner you need to improve on your skills to control these hard-hitting batsmen," he added.

Mishra said every year the IPL brings with it new challenges for bowlers, especially spinners.

"The most challenging is that every year in IPL you see new players, some of whom you might not have even seen. The challenge is to bowl against these new players.

"It becomes little difficult to bowl against these players because every year batsmen come up with new shots. The game is becoming faster every year. So the challenge is to manage yourself," Mishra said.

Off-spinner Jayant Yadav, who is a part of the current India Test team, and left-arm spinner Shahbaz Nadeem also agreed with Mishra.

"To stop power-hitting you have to be aware about everything. You have to be aware about the batsmen, you have to be aware about conditions. You have to read the game pretty fast. Every ball in T20 can win you a match. You need to outthink and outsmart a batsmen," Yadav said.

Nadeem, who has been the leading wicket taker in domestic cricket for the last two seasons, added: "To be successful in T20 you need to outthink the batsmen. Line and length is very important. You need to deceive the batsman in air because a batsman will always try to score against spinners. The way batsmen come up with new shots, spinners too need to develop new balls, like carrom ball."