For a Test bowler, balls per wicket says more than runs per wicket

Economy makes a bowler look respectable, and respectable bowlers do not deliver twenty wickets in five days.

Twenty wickets. That is the requirement, and it is the only requirement, because a Test match cannot be won without them regardless of how many runs your batters pile up. Every argument about which bowler to pick should start from there, and most start instead from a bowling average that quietly rewards a man for not taking wickets cheaply enough to be interesting.

Consider two bowlers with identical averages. One takes a wicket every fifty balls at three an over. The other takes one every seventy-five balls at two an over. Their numbers match, and they are not the same asset. The first one gives a captain the ability to end an innings on a flat fourth day. The second gives him the ability to keep a lid on things while somebody else ends it, and if nobody else in the attack can, the match is a draw and the number looks fine in the almanack.

The other reason I favour the strike rate is that it is harder to fake. Economy improves when a bowler works to a defensive field, when the game is dead, when the opposition is batting for a draw and has no interest in scoring. All of those inflate the average in a bowler's favour without any evidence of threat. Balls per wicket is comparatively stubborn. You either get people out or you do not.

The obvious objection is the holding role. Somebody has to bowl the overs into the wind, tie an end up and let the strike bowler attack in short bursts from the other. That is real work and it does not show in the strike rate. My answer is that this role should be filled by whoever is fourth in the attack, not selected for, and certainly not celebrated as a specialism, because a side with two containment bowlers in a four-man attack has already conceded that it can only win when the pitch does the work.

Which is the wider point. Selecting for economy is selecting for the draw, and it happens most often in sides that are frightened of losing.

Pick the bowler who might go for four an over and might bowl them out before tea. The other one keeps you in matches you were never going to win.