Turning the pages of Old Hubbard’s Almanac, I see in the coming 12 months a triumphant Tokyo Olympics towering over everything in a year which also includes a curiously orchestrated European Football Championship scattered all over the continent, but with England having their best chance of collecting a major trophy since 1966 with every single one of their home games at Wembley, which also stages the semi-finals and final. So much for Brexit, eh?

As a matter of interest quite a few people have asked me whether in years to come the Home Nations will be excluded from all European Championships because Britain will no longer be part of the European Union. Not at all. 

Britain remains a European country, it is be simply no longer part of the European Union and as far as I can ascertain the only sport where Britain competes in a European Union Championship is boxing, in which British boxers will no longer be allowed to take part. But they can still box for full European titles. Got it?

Additionally this year we have the T20 Cricket World Cup which, if anything like in its full Monty of last year, will have us all on the edge of our seats again. The other major highlight is likely to be a world heavyweight boxing championship whirligig, which, when it stops, may well see Britain winning, claiming what is still the richest prize in sport outright.

Or not. Sport is a capricious beast, which is why those of us who watch from the sidelines are all so enraptured by it.

One other thing I do confidently forecast is that more high heels - or rather running spikes, football studs and even boxing boots - will bring about a further shattering of the glass ceiling with women catching up, and even in some cases overtaking men in various fields of play.

You have only to switch on the telly these days to see that virtually every sport covered has at least one female pundit, even in men-only matches including football, cricket, tennis, rugby, boxing et al.

Presenters of sport or sports news programmes on the box are predominantly women, and not only Sky. And why not?

Looking ahead to Tokyo 2020 next July and August brings back particularly happy memories for me. The Games staged there 56 years ago were the first of the dozen I have covered in well over half a century of sports writing.

As a freshfaced newlywed of only six weeks, I set off not only with excitement but some trepidation of the task ahead. I need not have worried. It was a wonderful experience. That fragrance of cherry blossom still lingers from an event free of the nasty odours that have enveloped so many Olympics since.

As I have suggested before, those of 1964 probably were the last of what dear old Pierre de Coubertin envisaged as the true Olympics, free of terrorism, commercialism, gigantism and sport’s ugliest of four letter words, dope. At least, one imagines so and there was no evidence to contradict it.

Tokyo 1964 was designed to demonstrate to the world the rehabilitation of a nation after the Japanese atrocities of World War II which, as recounted by my late father-in-law, a prisoner of war in Changi jail and then on the Burma railway, were truly unspeakable. But those Games were also evidence of the rebuilding of a nation following the equally horrific atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The 1964 Games were a delight as well as personally memorable. The coming Games will, I believe, be at least equally special, especially emphasising the rise and rise of women in sport.

Britain can anticipate repeat winning performances of current world champions Dina Asher-Smith over 200m and heptathlete Katrina Johnson-Thompson. 

Joining them on the podium as a trio of gold medallists surely will be a doughty young lady from south London, 18-year-old Caroline Dubois whose fistic exploits are the talk of women’s boxing. She has already acquired national, European and Youth Olympic lightweight titles and is as prolific a puncher as you will see in the women’s game.

In my view she could be bigger, and better, than the now retired double Olympic flyweight gold medallist Nicola Adams. She happens to be the little sister of Britain’s new and unbeaten British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois, arguably alongside Deontay Wilder as the hardest puncher in world boxing.

He waits in the wings while World Boxing Council champion Wilder and Tyson Fury settle their differences in Las Vegas in February. 

Olympic champion Anthony Joshua after his abject aberration against the Teletubby lookalike Andy Ruiz Jnr has subsequently regained his quadruple titles. He now has two mandatory defences and, should Fury emerge as the eventual victor after what is likely to be a trio of engagements with Wilder, a final all-time blockbuster showdown with Joshua to unify the crown awaits - possibly in Saudi Arabia, whose petro-dollars are set to dominate major sports events in the next decade.

Elsewhere, the VAR will remain one of the most vexed issues in sport with further contention and controversy, but as new-tech becomes even more enmeshed in the games we play, one doubts it will be scrapped. But it has to be refined.

We must hope that this year’s Honours List is not a botched up job like the recent one where only four cricketers and not the entire winning World Cup team were given gongs. It was good to see the brilliant presenter Gabby Logan receive an MBE, with a further honour for Baroness Sue Campbell, who is now head of women’s football and whose overall contribution for sport throughout the years sport has been immense.

But why zilch for the golden girls of the World Athletics Championships Dina and Katrina, in a year when half the sporting awards went to women?

And once again, as in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards, boxing received short shrift. Yet there is no worthier recipient than the current world featherweight champion Josh Warrington, the squeaky-clean Leeds warrior whose contribution to championing the Armed Forces and its charities is commendable.

A trained dental technician Warrington is a smart, intelligent young man who is a credit to his sport.

Hopefully this year we might see a knighthood finally bestowed on Frank Bruno for his work in helping the mentally stricken. Surely it is about time another boxer received the regal tap on the shoulder, following Sir Henry Cooper.

In the meantime sit back and enjoy the 2020 sporting show. Wishing all the happiest of New Years.