Even so, I don’t think it is sentimental of me to claim that British sports fans are unlikely ever to experience another summer like the one we lived through in 2005.

Rekindled by the start this week of a new series of cricket Test matches between the old adversaries, England and Australia, the memory of the two come-from-behind victories, one as surprising as the other, which bookended the season remains so vivid it is hard to credit the events are now a decade old.

Their separation by the horror of the 7/7 bombings, which I experienced only from Singapore, serves to underline that sport, at its best, is not mere flummery, and that the fellow feelings it can engender and the bridges it seeks to build carry a higher purpose.

Looking back through my coverage of the final stages of the 2012 Olympic race, I see that after publication of the report of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Evaluation Commission in early June, Paris was quoted by one bookmaker as 1/6 favourite, with London at 7/2.

On travelling to the Far East nearly a month later, at around the same time as then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and an extensive assortment of other VIPs, ranging from footballer David Beckham to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I wrote of a “growing sense that Wednesday’s decision…could hinge on a handful of votes”.

There still seemed little doubt that Paris was in the box-seat, however.

My memories of the final hours before Decision Day on July 6 consist of the usual jumble of quasi-surreal encounters and conversations that IOC Sessions tend to throw at you.

Waiting with hotel staff for the arrival of Jacques Chirac, the French President; Hillary Clinton’s press conference; a private briefing in the hotel room of Bertrand Delanoë in which the Paris Mayor confided that to combat stress he performed 60 daily push-ups and sit-ups at 6am, and gave a short demonstration; being told by footballer Laurent Blanc that he would like to meet Muhammad Ali; the heart-breaking frailty of the great boxer when he made a brief public appearance; admiring the London bid’s classy, Yorkshire-made cream, maroon, red, black and blue ties, and being told that the London 2012 uniform included underwear, but, for some reason, only for the men.

And then the strictly-choreographed theatre of the Big Day.

A very few wiser souls - notably insidethegames editor, Duncan Mackay - had already cottoned on and gone public with their realisation, but it was only after the proficient but flat Paris presentation that it began to occur to me that there could be any other winner.

London’s brilliant, mould-breaking pitch then ripped open the door that the lacklustre finale of the French capital’s campaign had left ajar for them.

By the time then IOC President Jacques Rogge uttered the crucial word “Lon-don” that evening, I had managed to pre-write stories covering both possible outcomes, in a fit of belt-and-braces prudence I have always been thankful for.

Looking back now at the Financial Times coverage I contributed to, a couple of things jump out at me.

One is that shares in construction-related companies such as Balfour Beatty, Carillion and WS Atkins climbed by about five per cent.

The other, in a table of big Olympic projects, is the price-tag ascribed to the Olympic Stadium: £250 million.

The Olympic and Paralympic bid got sport onto the FT’s front page that summer, but not as often as the outbreak of cricket fever that took hold in August and September, as the England XI wrested the Ashes back from Australia after 16 years of hurt.

On one occasion, as England closed in on series victory in South London, the fact that bad light had ended play early, hence improving England’s prospects of securing the draw they needed, was considered front page news.

“I couldn’t believe it the other day when we were featured on the front page of the Financial Times,” England new ball bowler Matthew Hoggard told another newspaper, the Daily Telegraph.

“Bloody hell, things have to be going well for English cricket if we make Financial Times front pages.”

My most exhilarating memory of that utterly gripping sequence of matches, which began with defeat at Lord’s by a dispiritingly wide margin, was of the crowds milling around the Old Trafford ground in Manchester trying desperately to get in for the fifth and final day’s play, with England pressing hard for a victory that would be thwarted by Ricky Ponting’s seven-hour 156.

Lancashire County Cricket Club chief executive Jim Cumbes said 10,000 were turned away: “I have never seen this, ever”.

If you require evidence of the sheer irresistibility of long-form sport at its best, that, I would suggest, takes some beating.

Both episodes of British sporting history culminated after a fashion under Nelson’s gaze at Trafalgar Square.

With the Olympics, the tension-turned-exhilaration on Dame Kelly Holmes’s face encapsulated the entire two-year process.

With the cricket, talismanic all-rounder Andrew Flintoff’s public confession to David Gower encapsulated rather the well-earned celebrations that had been raging since the previous evening when the Australian openers had exited the field after just four balls of their second innings.

“To be honest, David, I’m struggling,” the cricketer since usually known as “Freddie”, acknowledged, his eyes shaded by dark glasses.

“Behind these glasses tells a thousand stories.”

It was a day or two after that when sports marketing specialist Nigel Currie brought home to me one measure of what Flintoff had achieved through his superhuman performances.

“Flintoff is only the third figure with top-notch marketing potential to emerge from English cricket since the war, after Denis Compton and Ian Botham,” Currie said.

Heady days.