Who needs culture, food and history? This is the best reason to travel

I love sport. If it runs, jumps, kicks, catches, swings, swims, skis, revs or strokes a Kookaburra through the covers, I'm into it. And I'm prepared to travel far and wide to see it. Only fans have this level of passion (but don't Google that).

Humans bond over sport. The Olympic motto is "Faster, Higher, Stronger - Together". Camaraderie is built on a mutual love of highly skilled, gladiatorial competition.

We saw this at the recent FIFA World Cup when the world gathered for the world game in the USA, Canada and Mexico. Ten thousand Aussies reportedly cheered on the Socceroos at their matches. The world's biggest sporting event played to full stadiums and, by all reports, attracted happy visitors who got as many hot dogs, poutines and tamales as their digestive systems could tolerate.

According to data and analytics group YouGov, one in four consumers globally plan to take a sports-driven trip in the next 12 months, while one in three Australians see sporting events as an opportunity to visit a new destination.

A first-class sport to travel for - and bear with me here - is cricket. Matches last for days, it's always summer and fans of the flannelled foolery know their stuff. The English Barmy Army and the Indian Bharat Army follow their respective teams all over, and in big numbers. When they come to Oz, your next best mate is just a Guinness or a shared biryani away.

One of the grandest trips of my life was to Barbados to watch Australia play the West Indies. The locals welcomed us with steel bands, lilting calypso accents and the faint whiff of spliff. On the first day of the test match at Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, I was served a rum punch the size of a lagoon. With a smile that could power a data centre, the barman said: "Go on, you Aussies t'ink you can drink? You have a go at dat." Later in the day, after a couple of "dose", I spied a cool Bajan local loping along with an inflatable kangaroo under his arm, as casual as if he was carrying a beach towel.

"Did you kidnap that marsupial?" I demanded.

"No, mon. He be sick o' watching Chanderpaul bat, so I be taking him on tour of de island. Wanna come?"

Of course, sport is just one reason to go somewhere fabulous. Your adventure doesn't end at stumps, the finish line or the final whistle. One perfect day in Milan, I explored the Duomo cathedral and saw Da Vinci's The Last Supper in the morning, before heading off to Stadio San Siro to watch the supposedly mighty AC Milan take on lowly Verona in the afternoon.

The San Siro is a seething cauldron of raw Italian passion. It holds more than 80,000 people in grandstands so close to the pitch you feel like you could dive in the penalty box yourself. It heaved in a sea of giant flags, and red and black scarves and seat cushions. Only the Milanese could make this colour scheme stylish.

The visiting gentlemen from Verona scored twice late in the match to achieve an improbable three-all draw, which triggered more despair than when Tony Soprano found out Pussy was an FBI informant. The best-dressed soccer hooligans in the world, the Milan fans would have rent their clothes and thrown their loafers had they not been Gucci. Instead, they threw their seat cushions until the pitch was more red and black than green.