Hey Mr Tambourine Man

Happy Birthday Bob Dylan.

Fantasy Bob isn't sure that you really got cricket.  He doesn't think you ever played the game.  But a poet like you must have a sense of its drama and its grandeur.  It was no surprise to FB therefore to discover some great cricket songs among your back catalogue - it's about time these numbers were brought together onto a single album.

Bowlin' in the Wind
A Hard Rain's Gonna Stop Play
Tangled Up on the Crease
Bob Dylan's 115th Innings
Don't Think Twice, Get on the Front Foot
Gates of Eden Gardens
I Threw it All Away (but my action was subsequently pronounced legitimate)
Lillee, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
Wide is Just a Four Letter Word
The Lonesome Run of Chris Tavare
Stuck Inside of Melbourne with the Ashes Blues Again
Positively Fourth Eleven
It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Batting. 

Like a Rolling Stone was a definitive track for FB as he was growing up - never bettered, even though there seems to be no reference to cricket in it - or is this a precise analysis of facing your first ball? How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown.........

But if you asked Fantasy Bob to think really hard and choose his favourite Dylan lyric ever, it might well be this - Love Minus Zero/No Limit - hear the man himself in an archive recording on the link.  This really does say it all about batting:

She knows there's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all

Test Match Quality