If cricket had been included in these Olympics, rather than waiting to make its debut in its natural home of Los Angeles in 2028, the last two weeks might have been even more enjoyable for an Australian sports fan.

The test match format would of course be a stretch, at least in part because it would force the IOC to decide what constitutes a “moral victory” – a title we also declare when we beat a potentially energetic Chinese swimmer in the pool, so it’s a common phrase.

Ben Stokes, who will carry the flag for Great Britain before winning the high jump gold medal, may be quietly fuming as Australians dance wildly through the streets of Sydney, celebrating our most successful Games yet – 18 golds and more; 41 medals in total.

No doubt he would have liked to point out that his own country, tiny New Zealand, had just achieved a moral medal victory over Australia, with three gold medals to their name, just 10 places behind our third-placed Australia.

Around this time every four years, antipodeans develop an interest in demographic mathematics, noting, for example, that New Zealand has one gold medal for every 1.7 million inhabitants.

This kind of medals per capita mentality has helped them overtake Australia in past Olympics, or “bist” as they like to pronounce it, but this time our gain is so big that we’ve given one gold medal to every 1.4 million Australians – for those playing at home, take out our total population, minus a few people we don’t want to count anymore, like Rupert Murdoch and Lynton Crosby, divide by the number of golds won and there you have it. I’ll save you some time and point out that Great Britain has given one gold medal to every 5.6 million Britons. Nonsense.

Three gold coins in one house

In fact, we had so few participants that we had to take multiple gold medals from single figures; we watched Jess Fox take two gold medals in canoeing and her sister Noemie take another gold in women’s cross-country skiing.