A mere 121 years after cricket made its one and only Olympic appearance, we have come together as a sport to try and recreate history and rejoin the Olympic family. In the intervening years, since Britain beat France in what would later be ratified as a gold-medal match, the subject of cricket in the Olympics has been raised on numerous occasions.

This week 40 years ago, Carl Lewis, Ed Moses, Ulrike Meyfarth, Jarmila Kratochvílová, Steve Ovett and Seb Coe were amongst the winners at the 1981 Athletics World Cup in Rome’s Olympic stadium.

If you’re not Swedish, and you’re not Finnish, it is probably hard to understand what the annual athletics match between these two nations means. But the names they use for it offer a small clue. The Swedes call it "The Finn Battle". The Finns call it "The Sweden Battle".

Have you noticed something different about these Paralympics? No I do not mean they are being played out before a crowd free zone in Tokyo. It is that at last they are no longer playing second fiddle to the greatest sporting show on Earth, the supporting act which now traditionally follows the Olympic Games themselves.

The Olympic Flags are flying at half-mast this week in Lausanne and across Belgium in memory for Jacques Rogge. His 12-year tenure as President of the  International Olympic Committee (IOC) will perhaps best be remembered for his work in launching the Youth Olympic Games.

With the extended Pyeongchang 2018/Tokyo 2020 Olympic cycle finally drawing to a close, two of the grand old names of United States industry will be ending their association with the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s The Olympic Partner (TOP) worldwide sponsorship programme.

The fascinating inner dynamics of the pole vault world were in evidence once again in Paris this weekend as the Diamond League continued on its European route to the concluding final in Zurich from September 8 to 9.

One can only imagine the month Afghanistan’s Paralympic athletes Hossain Rasouli and Zakia Khudadadi have had, with the pair’s hopes of competing at Tokyo 2020 having been dashed last week, only to now be in the Japanese capital.

When in 2013, the global baseball and softball families agreed to merge under one unified, global governing body – the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) – we did so in the long-term interest of our sports. We understood there was strength in unity and, by taking the best of both sports, we could form a stronger and more convincing campaign to get baseball and softball back on the Olympic programme.

One of the great pleasures of the Tokyo Olympics was to visit the equestrian events. These were staged in an arena that had been part of the Games in 1964. And, when Britain took the team eventing crown, it also brought back memories of a previous golden era.

You may have noticed a stream of tweets by FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura from the Beach Soccer World Cup in Moscow since the tournament began last week.

Apparently The Taliban are already forming a new Government in Afghanistan, including appointing ministers.

Just as for the Olympic Games, a month ago, Tokyo’s impressive National Stadium was the setting for the opening of the Paralympic Games.

It is September 3, 2012 and I am in the middle of a West London square sipping something fizzy and celebrating a friend’s birthday.