Cricket is no less extensive, with even the least elevated of counties spending much of the spring in warm-up competition in Dubai. In truth the glorious roll call of generalists who played professional football and county cricket, that includes the likes of Freddie Goodwin, Phil Neale, Jim Standen and Mickey Stewart, had ground to a halt 25 years ago.
Phil Neville might have played in the same Lancashire junior set-up as Andrew Flintoff and been regarded as the more likely future England stalwart, but he was obliged to give up the game entirely when his football career took off.
There was no chance, in the new way of doing things, of excelling at both sports. These days even the Neville experience is unlikely to be followed.
Boys who demonstrate a facility at sport are quickly routed into a specialism. Football club academies pick up new recruits as young as six and insist they do nothing else that might somehow dilute their footballing progress.
They are discouraged from picking up a bat in the summer, instead they are sent on football training camps or told to rest. Even the old charity matches at Old Trafford between Manchester United and City players are no more than a quaint historical footnote.
Not least because Sergio Agüero and David Silva are unlikely to be well versed in coping with reverse swing. Though you imagine, were such a fixture to take place, Louis van Gaal would insist on being the umpire, certain that he knew all there was to know about the rules of the game.
Instead of revelling in the true sporting all-rounder, we are left with a fleeting glimpse of Kane horsing around on the Spurs training ground. Though the way he addressed the ball, given the chance you suspect if anyone was going to prove themselves the heir to C B Fry it is Harry Kane.