Joie de vivre is a cheerful enjoyment of life. It's not just a fancy way of saying "pleasure", though. Nor "glee". Nor "exultation", "delight", "satisfaction", "hale-and-heartiness" or "smugness", nothing quite captures the exact essence of this French phrase. For joie de vivre signifies enjoyment of the mundane. You may experience joie de vivre while taking a warm shower. Or while having a tasty meal.
It was also the title of an article I penned on James Anderson back in 2020 when he went past 600 Test wickets. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) that piece of writing is now buried underneath the ever-multiplying debris of defunct internet domains and waning passions. But the rough spirit of the piece was as follows: Anderson, the greatest new-age British bowler, is forced into a corner where he has to learn to smile about the little things and see the funny side of incompetence because the crown jewel, that 600th scalp, is proving itself a tough nut to crack.
It was hard to follow the events of July 11 and not be taken back to that moody evening in Manchester when three catches were dropped off his bowling and he still finished with match figures of 7 for 99.
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Is imperfection a moral failure? Millions of men and women strive every day only to see food not being put on the table yet. We commit mistakes. We say the wrong things at the wrong time. To forego these misadventures would be idyllic; perfect.
But what of the valves of one's experiential trail that thus become shut? If perfection can be achieved by sieving out negative experience, are we truly left with perfection or are we left with a highlights reel? Something is lost when negative experience is filtered out. It's like the who-is-the-most-famous-person-in-the-world problem: the answer cannot be the most famous person of the world because the most famous person would be famous for being famous.
It is often said that Anderson has been the perfect fast bowler in English conditions, but can there be a greater mistruth if this statement is taken literally? We are speaking of a man who averaged 33 and traveled at four runs an over in home conditions in Tests in his first five years of international cricket. He was described as the boy with the golden arm and the man with shoulders sunken from having carried England's bowling at too young an age within the same breath. Anderson's career is an ode to gradual improvement, not of raw talents or hitting the straps early, and what improves over time is never truly perfect.
Or perhaps this is a statement about present conditions, that his modern-day perfection is a result of the ECB's unflinching commitment to sports science research and his own unquenchable desire for improvement; that there are multiple Andersons of which at least one, possibly the 2014-22 version, is "perfect". But what of the still uncorrected bowling action from 2014 to 2017, wherein he was converting his alignment from front-on to side-on during the bowling stride, as opposed to shifting to a side-on alignment midway through his run-up as he would come to do later in his career, in order to minimize the time he spent in the air and thus reduce the damage done to his body?
What of the Anderson of 2020 to 2023, whose many tweaks to his bowling in order to keep his body above his knees had rendered him speed-less before a new set of touch-ups had him pushing past the 135kph mark in India and London in 2024?
What of late-stage Anderson whose 106 balls per innings in Test matches in England paled in comparison to opposition opening bowlers yet England had to keep him under wraps, or the Anderson on that gloomy evening in Southampton whom the milestone he would have so loved to tick off showed no love?
If one version of Anderson is perfect, the others are, definitionally, imperfect. The problem is that the many nips and tugs he has made over the years to his craft in search of that elusive ideal are so temporally disjoint that it is impossible to nail down one single technically and statistically perfect version over time. Those versions, like the man himself, are perfectly imperfect.
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So was his farewell. There is, firstly, the conflict of (arguably) being the greatest bowler from England yet not going out on his own terms. Secondly, there is the actual non-event of the farewell itself: there are no such fireworks in London as when Stuart Broad sent reporters into a frenzy by announcing his retirement hours before the start of the final day of the final Ashes Test. Broad signed off by taking the final two wickets to fall in a miracle series that featured a miracle comeback from his team; Anderson's final hurrah is embracing Gus Atkinson after his match-winning fifth wicket.
All this may read overly bleak. Like he isn't the most prolific fast-bowling wicket-taker in the history of the Test game. Like the entirety of Lord's didn't go nuts watching him down a pint of Guinness. Those invaluable records, memories, and greatness notwithstanding, there was a profound sadness to this event. A sadness that, despite the event's many meanings, feels completely untethered to the fact that the cricketing world will never get to witness the greatest operator of the swinging cherry there ever has been another time. This is the sadness of imperfection, of not being able to go out on his own terms, one that Anderson has had to "make peace with". A sadness that arises from comparing the world in its real state to what could have been, of comparing imperfection with a hypothetical state of perfection.
Was Anderson experiencing this weltschmerz when he dropped the catch that could have been his 705th? Rewatch that grassed chance, and you might notice a gradual surprise taking over his eyes, a surprise that conveys the possibility that maybe he wasn't expecting the ball to come to him, maybe he was wishing for the only time in his 21-year career that he gets to do the bowling, his thing, and no more.
704, that could have been 705, but will remain 704. Perfect, yet imperfect.
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It could have been more. One more. So much more. But it is what it is and that's okay.
For the breeze will blow again and Atkinson will pluck out that final wicket, and you will be the first one to embrace him with the widest smile on your face and the warmest glow in your heart. Grin sheepishly when you drop that catch. Fall down to your knees and hide your face in your hands. Just like you did in Southampton years ago when you were chasing your 600th. Because what is perfection if not an artefact of the deepest vulnerability and imperfection?
Thank you, James Anderson, for showing me that improvement is the hallmark of true excellence. Thank you for reminding me that the whole is the sum of its parts, not how the first dozen bets pan out. Thank you for restoring my faith in the human condition by showing me that even the grumpiest of fast bowlers can begin to be amused by the little things and chortle at the humor of unforced errors. Thank you for proving to me that the joy of striving lies not in the achievement of perfection but in the struggle towards perfection itself; that in the most monotonous mundaneness of everyday existence lies the joie de vivre of life. Thank you, James Anderson.