The decision has clearly been made to avoid building prohibitively-expensive and hugely-unnecessary venues which will be destined thereafter to become elephants of the white variety.

So there have been some lessons learned from Olympic Games of 2004 and 2016, although that is of little consolation to the Greek and Brazilian taxpayers who financed them.

The only new venue constructed for this year's Commonwealth Games was the Sandwell Aquatic Centre and that seems destined for extensive use well into the future, even if the locals do have a bizarre way of pronouncing "aquatic". They'll be telling us how to say "Launceston" properly next.

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Elsewhere, ludicrous expenditure has been adeptly side-stepped in a manner which so many other large-scale sporting events could learn from, without mentioning specific examples. Except the FIFA World Cup, obviously.

Rather than build a superfluous velodrome, the "Birmingham" Games opted to use the 2012 London Olympic venue at Lee Valley which made sound financial sense even if it did mean the track cyclists were more than 200 kilometres away from the hub of Games activity.

Around Birmingham and the entire Midlands region, existing venues have been utilised while five different regionalised athlete villages have avoided the traditional creation of an athlete metropolis.

The National Exhibition Centre is a prime example.

Already the UK's largest exhibition venue and one of Europe's leading event destinations, it welcomes around 2.3 million visitors and 45,000 exhibiting companies to more than 500 events every year.

For these Games, it staged badminton, boxing, netball, table tennis and weightlifting in a similar way to how Jeff's Shed, sorry, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre was used during the 2006 Games.

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First opened in 1976, Alexander Stadium became the home of UK Athletics in 2011 following a refurbishment which saw the creation of the 5000-seater East Stand on the back straight. More seating was established for these Games and the venue has been a superb host of both the opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics program.

Arena Birmingham is a large city-centre complex which hosted the gymnastics and main media centre - practices linked by requiring supreme flexibility whether in physique or expense claiming.

The arena has hosted more than 30 different sports in its history, including multiple global events such as the IAAF World Indoor Athletics Championships, Gymnastics World Cup Final and Badminton World Championships.

Coventry Stadium and Arena welcomed the judo, rugby sevens and wrestling. Presumably, as the regular home of Coventry City Football Club, it was deemed ideal to embrace a contest in which an inferior foe is relegated into submission.

Edgbaston Stadium regularly hosts international matches and is indelibly lodged in the Australian psyche as the place where Michael Kasprowicz was caught behind enabling England to win by two runs en route to claiming the 2005 Ashes. Debate continues to this day as to the validity of that series-defining wicket.

Seventeen years later, the home of Warwickshire County Cricket Club has benefitted from a £32 million redevelopment, and being a short bus trip from the city centre, was an obvious choice to host the return of cricket to the Games for the first time since 1998.

The same goes for Leamington Spa's Victoria Park which annually hosts the Bowls England National Championships and also held the Women's World Bowling Championships in 1996 and 2004.

Meanwhile, the University of Birmingham's two international-standard hockey pitches, built in 2017 as part of a £10 million redevelopment, have been re-carpeted with temporary seating for around 6000 spectators added to create a venue which Australia's most-capped international player Eddie Ockenden described as one of the best he had played at.

Birmingham also made excellent use of its natural surroundings for the Games.

Sutton Park, one of Europe's largest urban parks, was a splendid venue for all triathlon events, even if Jake Birtwhistle and Co. weren't great fans of the undulating running course.

Cannock Chase was an even better fit for the mountain biking.

At 69km sq, it may be the UK's smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but in the English Midlands, it's probably the best option you're likely to find to dispose of a body.

A thousand-year-old former medieval royal hunting ground created by William the Conqueror, it is a popular centre for recreational activities ranging from walking to deer-spotting complete with a Go Ape treetop adventure and segway courses. Kind of like Hollybank with less possums and more squirrels.

After all the hard work that must have gone into preparing the course, it was a shame the event was so poorly supported. Surely the Commonwealth could muster more than eight female riders, one of which did not finish, two more looked like they had only just been shown a mountain bike and were swiftly lapped.

None of which can be blamed on organisers who should be commended for a pragmatic but practical approach to staging the Games.

Now all they've got to do is get the media buses to turn up when they're meant to.

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