‘Every Dylan song could be improved’: is perfection possible, or even desirable?

On the second version of the song Love Sick – which only saw the light of day last year as part of the continuing series of official Bootleg releases – Bob Dylan says he’s “struggling, striving / For perfection”.

I am guessing that every mathematical proof is a kind of perfection but, knowing little of that abstract realm, I’ll move on to the corporeal world of sport.

There’s an almost religious feeling about it Even when judges award a gymnast a perfect 10 – as happened to Nadia Comaneci on the asymmetric bars at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 – the achievement contains within it the trembling possibility of further improvement: another twist, an extra somersault, a still more graceful landing.

And that’s why the opponent invariably celebrates a nine-darter even when, to paraphrase Dostoevsky in The Idiot, all his hopes and faith have been shattered (as happened when the defeated Bradley Brooks applauded and embraced Borland).

That bit of luck brings us to the expectant threshold of perfection: the sixth and final ball of the over – which Sobers wallops not simply beyond the boundary but out of the ground.

(There is no such thing as a perfect catch in baseball; it’s compromised by the mitt, which simply collects the ball, while a fielder in cricket has, so to speak, to clinch the point.)