Christmas has come early for the Midlands city that is now looking towards the New Year with a sense of renewed excitement. Circumstances have dictated that Birmingham will have less than the usual preparation period for hosting these Games - but four years after what is promising to be a memorable 2018 edition on the Gold Coast, it will surely rise to the occasion as it has in the past.

"The UK has a brilliant track record for putting on the biggest sport events in the world and it is great news that Birmingham has been selected to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games," said Britain's Sports Minister, Tracey Crouch.

"I am sure that we will put on an event that will make the country proud, leave a strong sporting legacy and strengthen relationships with our friends across the Commonwealth."

Sir Lenny Henry, Chancellor of Birmingham City University, has also been moved to make public record of his own hopes regarding the impending event. "Bringing the Commonwealth Games to Birmingham will help boost the profile of a city which should not just be recognised on a national scale, but deserves to be a name that resonates around the world," he said.

"The city already boasts much of the infrastructure needed to put on an event of this size and scale, and to host the Games will be a real positive for all of us with a connection with this part of the world."

Already, too, there is a deeper political resonance to Birmingham's 2022 task - the award has come amid profound concerns over the future global standing of Britain following the country's decision to leave the European Union.

Can Birmingham 2022 reassure on the subject of British capability? And will "strengthening relationships with our friends across the Commonwealth", as Crouch put it, be more than a question of amity at that point?

The last two Games to be held in Britain also carried important political freight. Glasgow 2014 reminded the world that the Commonwealth Games could be soundly and safely run following the lingering uncertainties and political corruption that had undermined the impact of the Delhi 2010 Games.

The Manchester Games of 2002 had helped persuade the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that Britain, and specifically London, might yet be able to bid for the 2012 Games despite the British Government's embarrassing failure to honour its promise of being able to host the 2005 International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships in the capital.

More than 20 members of the IOC were in Manchester to witness the Games, and Craig Reedie, then one of two British IOC members and also a director of Manchester 2002, commented: "What we must do now with these Games is show the rest of the world that we can organise a major sporting event."

The XVII Commonwealth Games in Manchester were the largest multi-sport event ever to have been held in the United Kingdom, and were the biggest in the Games' history. A total of 5,250 athletes and officials from 72 nations involved themselves in 17 different sports at 15 different venues.

So that box was ticked, handsomely. And the rest is Olympic history…

Amid the expressions of optimism and continuity it is strange to reflect that, only a year ago, the long-term future of the Commonwealth Games looked vexed.

While the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games were - and still are - set fair to maintain the giddy momentum established by the Glasgow 2014 Games, the message looming for the CGF was the same as that which greets travellers on and around the London Tube system: Mind The Gap.

Having become sole bidders for the 2022 Games following the withdrawal of competitors Edmonton because of uncertainty over oil prices, Durban had subsequently proved inept and inert.

Gideon Sam, the President of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee and a CGF vice-president, admitted at the CGF Assembly in October 2016 that Durban's hosting of the Games "hangs in the balance".

Earlier this year the balance tipped - and the 2022 Games were up in the air.

Durban thus joined the recently growing list of cities that had decided against pursuing Olympic or Commonwealth events - Oslo, Hamburg, Boston, Edmonton, Rome, Budapest…

The process of bidding for big events, it seemed, was in danger of becoming more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

The IOC, logically if a little grimly, secured the medium term future of the Games by creating what its President, Thomas Bach, was greatly relieved to call a "win-win" scenario, whereby the only two candidates left standing in the contest for the 2024 Games - albeit mightily impressive candidates - were allotted a Games each. Paris 2024 followed by Los Angeles 2028…

The CGF was not having to look quite so far into the future- but its experience was very different to that of the IOC. No sooner had Durban's disappearance created a vacuum than nature, it seemed, filled it.

Once the announcement been made that the next Games but one were being taken away from Durban because of continuing uncertainty over financing, a series of other Commonwealth nations and cities immediately stepped up.

India and Malaysia both emerged as potential hosts. In Britain, Liverpool - which had been preparing a bid for 2026 - confirmed it would be willing to host the Games four years earlier than that.

Fifteen years after it had hosted the Games, Manchester came in from left-field with potential interest.

There were also some strong signals that London might be interested - and, indeed, it will be very interested given that the 2022 track cycling will take place in the London 2012 venue of the Lee Valley VeloPark.

And then Birmingham, which proudly claims to have hosted more major sporting events than any other UK city and which had also been preparing to bid for the 2026 Games, announced its intentions…

There had also been interest expressed by Melbourne, hosts of the 2006 Games, in taking the Games to Australia for a successive time.

Even Edmonton indicated it might be ready to change its mind about hosting an event it last held in 1978.

No wonder David Grevemberg, the CGF chief executive, was able to say he was "very confident" a host for the 2022 Games would be found.

In short, what has happened in the space of the last 12 months has offered a fundamentally comforting demonstration of the enduring appeal of the Games that were first established in 1930.

Where does that appeal lie?

On the eve of the Glasgow 2014 Games, Adam Paker, then chief executive of Commonwealth Games England, offered his own view.

"I think one of the things which distinguishes the Commonwealth Games from the Olympic Games is the fact that there is a unique blend in the Commonwealths," he said.

"Of course there is world class sport - you have Jamaican sprinters, Canadian and Australian swimmers, African middle and long distance runners, and of course you will have a very strong team from England in Glasgow – but there is another side to it.

"The Olympics is all about fastest, highest, strongest, but at the Commonwealths there's a sense that for many of the athletes attending from all around the Commonwealth it's the pinnacle of their career to be at the Games and that it is fantastic that they are going to be there competing.

"Although I am not a big fan of the Friendly Games tag, there is a vital element of that within the Games which you don't find at the Olympics.

"I think from the UK Sport point of view they want to raise competitive standards as much as they  possibly can, but there are multiple objectives at a major Games such as we are about to have in Glasgow.

"Clearly we are striving to excel and to enable our elite athletes to be as strong as they can be to do well in the medal table.  But we are also being aware of what we can do to inspire people to take up sport themselves."

This unique, quadrennial event began as the British Empire Games in 1930, becoming the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954, with its epic mile race between Britain's Roger Bannister and John Landy of Australia, and, from 1974, the British Commonwealth Games.

From 1978 we have known them as the Commonwealth Games.

The Olympic Games' smaller and homelier relation - self-styled as the Friendly Games - is thriving, 87-years after it was established through the energy and vision of Bobby Robinson, manager of the Canadian athletics team at the 1928 Olympics.

Robinson was also sports editor of the local newspaper in Hamilton, Ontario, and enabled the first Games to take place in his home town after persuading the local authorities to contribute towards teams' travelling expenses.

He produced a mission statement that contrasted the new event with the Olympics: "It should be merrier and less stern and will substitute the stimulus of novel adventure for the pressure of international rivalry".

Robinson's proposed merriment has been conspicuously absent at some moments in the Games' history. Most notably when the Games returned for a second time to Edinburgh, after a period of 16-years, in 1986. A proposed rugby union tour of New Zealand by South Africa prompted 31 countries, largely from Africa and the Caribbean, to boycott the Edinburgh Games in protest against the South Africans' apartheid policy - even though South Africa had not been present in the Games in 1958 (and would not be welcomed back until 1994).

If that was a Games low point, it has, previously and subsequently, been more than counterbalanced by high points.

I can speak personally of the political, financial and indeed climatic gloom that seemed to surround the 1986 Edinburgh Games, as I was there for a part of them on behalf of The Guardian - and my joy at that fact irradiated any local depression.

The same goes for five of the subsequent seven Games. All of them, in my experience, benefited hugely from the range of abilities on show - and the fact that so many small nations, or even, in the British case, the proud home nations, were able to revel in their performances.

The 2006 Games in Melbourne were glorious - a Commonwealth version of the Sydney Olympics held six years earlier. Those Melbourne Games had a motto: "Elite sport is only half the story".

The other half was provided by competitors from the likes of Niue, a Pacific Island of just 2,000 inhabitants. Or its near neighbour, Nauru, effectively one large phosphate mine, that once again sent weightlifters seeking to maintain the medal-winning tradition of Marcus Stephen, who took a gold and two silvers in the 1990 Auckland Games.

Eight years earlier, in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, the Friendly Games had succeeded in bringing together professional athletes and amateurs in much the same manner as big city marathons.

The Olympics, with their stringent qualifications, would not have offered someone like Candace Blades the chance to contest the heptathlon. Yet this 18-year-old schoolgirl from Belize, and novice to the event, memorably stayed the course – with the motherly encouragement of Britain's world number one and soon-to-be Olympic champion Denise Lewis.

Those same Games saw the introduction of a hugely popular event that, last year, made its way onto the Olympic programme also - rugby sevens. The spectacle was hugely enjoyed by crowds that packed out the 5,000-seater Kelana Jaya stadium where, eventually, the great Jonah Lomu romped victoriously in celebration of New Zealand's gold.

Lomu, and other luminaries such as Australia's David Campese, had taken things relatively easy on the opening afternoon session, which took place in muggy heat and humidity. But the decibel level rose when the home side offered some significant opposition to a New Zealand side that had just beaten Sri Lanka 80-0.

The seven men in yellow shirts, all built on a significantly smaller scale than their fabled opponents, produced tackling a good deal more tigerish than the Malaysian economy of the time to hold a side that included not just Lomu but other test players such as Eric Rush, Christian Cullen and Joeli Videri at bay for more than two minutes - one of the longest scoreless periods of the day.

By the time the 14-minutes were up, New Zealand were 53-0 winners. But the Malaysians richly deserved the standing ovation they received.

When the curiously named, and diminutive, home player Shah of Iran grows old he will be able to tell his grandchildren of the time he stopped the great Lomu 10 yards short of the line. How? God only knows…

In such moments, in such memories – the reason the Commonwealth Games endure and abide.

So here's to you, Mr Robinson…