The Worcestershire champion Fred Root was born April 16, 1890. He was one of the earliest to gauge the ill-treatment (especially financial) dished out to the professional cricketer. A supreme strategist, Root was also one of the earliest exponents of leg-theory bowling. Abhishek Mukherjee looks at the career of a man whose honest efforts on the field and radical thoughts off it made him one of the most intriguing characters of between-wars cricket.