To be specific, I have been in Greece, cradle of the Olympic Movement, on the dazzling island of Corfu, best-known nowadays in the English-speaking world as the place where the Durrells made their home.

There, various members of the Authors Cricket Club - an institution active in the early years of the 20^th century and revived a hundred years later by my friends Charlie Campbell and Nicholas Hogg - took part in a unique event, the Corfu Literary Festival.

This combines evening discussions of books, big ideas and issues of the day with afternoon cricket-matches against local opposition.

That it went ahead, with one or two adjustments, in this COVID-cowed year was due more or less entirely to indomitable organisers Annabelle and Niko Louvros, along with novelist-cricketer Alex Preston.

While some might be surprised to see "Greece" and "cricket" mentioned in the same breath, the game has a near 200-year pedigree on Corfu.

It was first played there in 1823, while it was part of a British-ruled protectorate labelled the United States of the Ionian Islands.

The British finally left in 1864, but matches continued between local clubs and the crew of visiting Royal Navy ships.

Nowadays, the best Corfiot players, such as left-handed batsman Anastasios Manousis, are much too good for the forty- and fifty-somethings who make up the bulk of the Authors’ line-up.

But we did manage to win one of our matches, a first victory for the club on Greek soil.

The coronavirus threat meant that pressing ahead with the tour was not without risk.

We were required to take tests as a condition of playing.

This meant that, if any of us had tested positive, the entire party would probably have had to self-quarantine for 14 days, with all the financial and logistical knock-ons which that implies.  

Fortunately, nobody did test positive, and as one pitch-side, finger-prick test after another yielded a negative outcome, a most peculiar sense of pre-match euphoria overtook us, a mixture of relief and Ain’t No Stopping Us Now, as a pop song once put it.

This, along with the extra paperwork that foreign travel now entails, offered an eery insight into the obstacles, protocols and emotional swings and roundabouts that are the new normal for athletes and sports administrators from the local park to the Olympic podium.

Quite apart from playing though, what a joy it was, after months of Zooming and Teaming and plain old-fashioned phoning, to be able to conduct an honest-to-goodness, face-to-face, journalistic interview, my first in months.

Hellenic Cricket Federation President, Iosif Nikitas - a former captain of the Greek national team - was present for two of our matches.

I took the opportunity to waylay him on the shaded terrace of one of the cafés at boundary’s edge by the scenic old cricket-pitch on Corfu town’s Esplanade. 

Nikitas told me that Greece, an associate member of the International Cricket Council, the game’s governing body, boasts around 1,000 players, split equally between adults and youngsters.

Most of these are based either in Corfu, with its British connections, or the capital Athens.

Encouragingly, he said that his son, a level-two coach, spends the winters teaching the game in local schools and introducing those who develop a taste for it to clubs.

Asked who the best team he played against was, he replied that the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) came to Corfu three times while he was a player.

He said that Corfu won one of those fixtures.

What we mainly talk about is the Olympic Games, and what a difference it would make to Greek cricket if the sport could somehow make its way onto the Olympic programme.

There are two main reasons for this.

First, it would bring more money into the sport.

This could be invested in new facilities and other measures to spread appreciation of cricket around the country.

Second, Nikitas says, "it would be a great opportunity for expatriates to play for the national team".

By way of example, he tells me that Melbourne, one of the largest cities in cricket-mad Australia, has the biggest Greek community outside Athens itself.

To date, cricket has only once been played at an Olympics – all the way back in 1900 in Paris

And it has to be said that the path back onto the Games programme looks anything but straightforward.

Having said that, both Indian and Australian cities are among potential hosts for the 2032 Olympics.

It is not difficult to imagine either of these electing to include cricket on what would be a one-off basis.

The Olympic theme resurfaced, quite unexpectedly, the next day when who should walk past but Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, President of the 2004 Athens Olympic Organising Committee. 

These days, the woman who famously fought to make sure that Athens would be ready on time is President of something called the Greece 2021 Committee, a body set up to mark the 200^th anniversary of the Greek Revolution.

She was on the island, I discovered subsequently, in part to pay homage to Ioannis Kapodistrias, Greece’s first head of state, who was Corfu-born.

It remains hard for me, however, to think of Angelopoulos-Daskalaki in anything other than an Olympic context.

How far off those days now seem when the International Olympic Committee’s biggest worry was whether or not a handful of Greek sports venues would be completed in time to take their place in the spotlight.