To paraphrase the legendary coach of the Liverpool Football Club, Bill Shankly (who was talking about soccer), sport is not a matter of life and death — it’s more important than that.

Sport covers the world and spans the centuries. Some sports are popular everywhere; others are restricted to a single locality. Some sports emerged within our lifetimes; others have unbroken lineages that reach back to prehistory.

Over the years, my Games & Sports column explored this diversity. It has been predominantly a personal exploration. I have been sport-mad for as long as I can remember. I was born into a sport-loving family. One of the first gifts bestowed on me was a hand-knitted romper in the red and white colors of our local soccer team, Sunderland. I’ve remained a fan, through good times and bad, ever since.

During my childhood in Africa and South Korea, and throughout my continuing journeys as a travel writer, sport has always been with me. It is a reliable icebreaker with strangers. I have watched televised soccer matches in noisy bars; I have attended professional sporting events on every continent; and I have participated in impromptu games of soccer, cricket, volleyball and sports completely alien to me in backstreets, on beaches and even in a hotel dining room.

Ah, yes. That last one was the Indian sport of kabaddi, which resulted in one of the most surreal episodes of my life. I innocently asked the hotel manager about the sport I witnessed during a city tour of Nagpur. He proceeded to explain the rules using salt and pepper shakers, and then he instructed the waiters to move tables and chairs to make a playing area. I was soon chanting “kabaddi” while trying to evade capture by a chain of hand-holding hotel staff.

Perhaps the German couple who entered the dining room at that particular moment understood I was being introduced to a sport played by millions of Indians, though the shock on their faces suggested otherwise. I recounted my side of the story in my column in November 2009. In all likelihood, a very different version of the same story has been doing the rounds in Germany ever since that awkward encounter in the dining room of a Nagpur hotel.

In common with many sport fans, I often wonder how I would measure up against the pros. In 2000, on the Greenbrier golf course in West Virginia, I was granted the chance to find out, an experience recalled in my May 2008 column.

I was invited to play two holes with Nick Faldo and Sam Snead. Faldo was still close to the top of his game, while Slammin’ Sammy was posting respectable rounds at the age of 87.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Faldo said as I took to the tee. My heart was thumping. As the two legends looked on, I tried to remember the basics. I kept my head as still as possible, eyes keenly focused. My grip on the club was firm but not too tight. I shifted my weight to my right heel, then onto my left foot as I swung the club. Thwack. Two famous pairs of eyes followed the trajectory.

“Well, you hit the fairway,” Faldo said at last. “The wrong fairway, but never mind.” And so the tone was set. My view of my two playing companions was little better than if I’d been a spectator. They progressed directly from tee to green; I zigzagged from rough to rough, watching them from a distance.

When I joined them on the final green, they were deep in conversation, trading golf tips. It was the greatest lesson I learned that day. With 13 Majors between them (six to Faldo, seven to Snead), they were still looking for improvement. To get to the top of a sport, you don’t merely play it. You must be possessed by it.

Excellence in a sport such as golf can bring fame and fortune. Yet there are many other sports in which people can reach rarified pinnacles of excellence without recognition from the wider world.

Over the years, the column has covered dozens of relatively obscure sports, such as Valencian pilota (sort of like tennis, but using hands instead of racquets), wushu (a martial art), sepak takraw (a Thai version of volleyball, played with feet instead of hands), petanque (French bowling) and Finnish wife-carrying (self-explanatory).

All (with perhaps the exception of wife-carrying, in which beer often plays a performance-inhibiting role) demand exceptional talent and hours of daily practice in order to reach the top.

Although I was once selected to play for the Botswana junior tennis team, a tale I told in September 2008, I have long accepted my lowly place in the sporting firmament. As a participant, I will never be more than an enthusiastic amateur. But as a fan, I continue to experience highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies, almost as vividly as the players themselves.

For me, as for many people, sport has been a constant presence in my life. Many of my major milestones are entwined with sport. My first kiss, for instance.

That was a story I told in November 2008, of how, as an 8-year-old living on the coast of Kenya, I crept into the empty spectator gallery of a squash court with a classmate, an 8-year-old blonde girl.

A match was in progress. The players were too engrossed to notice us. Their tennis shoes squeaked on the wooden floor. Racquets swished; the rubber ball reverberated against the walls. There and then, I touched lips for the very first time and established — at least in my mind — an indelible association between squash and kissing.

And so my small personal sporting experiences have been added to the great communal melting pot. In every country, throughout human history, sport has swayed lives, generated passion and left its mark on the world. Nations rise and fall; lives are lived and lost. Sport goes on.