Start practising those excuses. For England fans, this Saturday is one of those that demands serious thought, by which I mean how to wheedle out of prior engagements and family obligations. No fewer than four of the national teams are in action, and to catch all the matches will require time, dedication and some nifty work with a TV recorder. How else can you expect to navigate the problem of the rugby team’s Fiji fixture kicking off only 20 minutes before the men’s T20 against India?

With some judicious content-stacking and spoiler-avoiding, however, a fan with the right subscriptions can expect to enjoy 13 uninterrupted hours on the sofa – starting with the morning session of the women’s Test and climaxing with a late-night footballing knockout against Norway. Nor is England the only game in town: there are three other home nations rugby matches to be watched, a Wimbledon women’s singles final, and the Tour de France.

This might feel like a once-in-a-generation alignment, a dazzling planetary parade of cosmic contests. But gazing back just seven days reveals a different truth, because last weekend gave us all that and a British Grand Prix. In fact, there was a moment last Saturday afternoon when all five terrestrial channels were showing simultaneous sport, thanks to the Nations Championship matches on ITV, qualifying from Silverstone on Channel 4, a T20 at Old Trafford live on Five and tennis blanketing the Beeb.

For those of us who grew up in the Grandstand era – those for whom the crown jewels weren’t just expensive baubles in the Tower of London, but six summer Tests and a Five Nations championship – seeing such a welter of competition on terrestrial telly has felt like a glorious throwback. Yet what we’ve been experiencing goes way beyond a nostalgia high. I’d argue that this has been the most halcyon single week of summer sport that many of us have ever experienced outside an Olympics.

Forget the quantity, for a moment, and consider the quality. For seven days, we’ve been served up a multi-course menu of shocks, dramas, nerveshredders and nailbiters. We’ve been fed highly anticipated debuts (like India’s wunderkind batter, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi) and long-expected farewells (vale, Cristiano Ronaldo).

In an all-time great performance from England’s footballers, some of the team’s most famous names did what they do best, at the moment it counted most. They were immediately upstaged by a show-stealing appearance from a complete unknown. I suspect I would still struggle to recognise Arthur Fery if I saw him at the deli counter in Wimbledon Village. And yet the Great New Hope for British tennis seems to be waging battle almost every time I switch on my TV.

Fery, of course, dished up several of this week’s delights. His last-Brit-standing victory over Zizou Bergs in the third round would have been delicious enough as a standalone. The follow-up five-setter against Grigor Dimitrov – a man whose Centre Court comeback would have been the headline in any other circumstance – was the cream on the strawberries. As for the quarter-final, Fery’s straight-sets triumph seemed too much for even his own dad to handle.

And when the Wimbledon wildcard wasn’t commanding the green screen, Novak Djokovic was making his own equally remarkable journey to the semis. Perhaps it was fated that his epic struggle against Félix Auger-Aliassime should coincide with Argentina threatening to lose to Egypt. While a 39‑year‑old footballer was dragging his team back from 2-0 down with some classic Lionel Messi magic, a 39‑year‑old tennis player was showing an opponent 14 years younger just how good he still is.

And even that wasn’t the whole story. Because this turned out to be the longest quarter-final in Wimbledon history, and we were heading to extra time in the Switzerland-Colombia game before Djokovic dragged his exhausted, stiffening body to victory. Could we finally go to bed? No, because we still had a penalty shootout to stay up for. One day, someone will make an art film that follows the remote-control dance we were all doing that evening, and I will happily watch it in its five-hour-and-15-minute entirety.

These are the kinds of challenges we’ve faced on a daily basis. Never in the history of second-screening has so much been demanded of so many. There’s always the radio, of course, and in my busy neighbourhood I find the car horns very handy for letting me know when I’ve just missed a goal somewhere. Even with those audio cues, plenty has slipped through the net. Some misses I regret less than others. If England are thumped by the Springboks in Johannesburg, and I don’t see it because Jacob Bethell is pummelling 26 off a Ravi Bishnoi over, does it even happen?

Cricket perhaps offers the best perspective on just how extraordinary this week’s sports programming has been. There have been five England internationals played over the past seven days, across three different formats. One was a home World Cup final, and the highest grossing women’s cricket match of all time. Another, at Bristol, brought the England men their first ever T20 series victory against an unfathomably fragile India. And on Friday, Nat Sciver-Brunt led her team through the Lord’s long room to start their first Test match at the game’s historic home.

Any one of those events would normally dominate the sporting conversation. This week, you wouldn’t be blamed for missing all three. And if you did follow them closely you might yet have overlooked Sunday’s British Grand Prix, whose high drama included some of the most exciting overtaking F1 has witnessed this season. It also boosted two beloved Britons to the podium and gave Charles Leclerc his first win in nearly two years.

Faced with such a glut of options, we all have to choose our own adventure – the only alternatives are paralysis, or, for the true completist, sleeplessness. But as long as this extraordinary sporting wave continues, I’ll keep riding it. Please accept my apologies for wherever it is I should have been.