Welcome Home Roy

"Playing for Australia is your own experience:
it's what you think it is. Just enjoy it mate"

It all but went unnoticed but Andrew Symonds was back, standing among the Test players at Centurion on the first day.

Always painted as the bad boy, he was in fact a victim not to physical injuries but a torment from within. His misfortune was to play at a time when such things weren't accepted as injury and illness and the only thing acted on were the consequences. How things have changed, with Mitch Johnson tearing the best team in the world apart with the ball and Shaun Marsh doing likewise with the bat. 

At the centre of the changed approach is coach Darren Lehmann, an avowed "old school" man who understands that players are just men and that personality is not the same as mental state. Lehmann wants their talent to shine through and knows that can't happen while you focus on symptoms rather than cause. He accepts his players are flawed and doesn't judge them for things that can't be controlled by bullish statements and unrealistic expectations. It's one instance where playing the man is more important than playing the ball.

Symonds demise started at the hands of his inexperienced best mate, Michael Clarke. His lack of team discipline needed censure but it also needed to be followed with understanding and a search for his particular truth. He should have been helped to chase down and tame his demons but instead, he was sanctioned and sent to keep the company of wolves. He and Clarke lost their friendship as one fell to the bottom and the other rose to the top.

On the first day at Centurion, Alex Doolan would receive his Baggy Green. Clarke had reinstated Steve Waugh's policy of having former players present new caps, even before Lehmann's tenure began and in direct opposition to his former captain's policy of presenting them himself. 

On this day, Andrew Symonds said the few words of encouragement to Doolan and then presented the coveted Baggy Green to him. There are those that thought Roy was a short form specialist who played Test cricket as a bonus and they would be wrong. For every moment of every one of his 26 Tests was special to him. Very few of Australia's four hundred odd inhabitants of that green sewn cloth have been as exhilarated as the lad who came from Birmingham but made Queensland his home and none would have put dreadlocks under its care. If he conveyed anything of that enthusiasm and desire and pride to Doolan and if the Tasmanian was smart enough to garner it, then his cricket will be richer.

Since Bobby Simpson became coach, Australia has spent a lot of time removing those who are different, those who don't just move to the beat of a different drum but are usually the one bashing the skins with their bare hands. Kids have been coached in the forward press, the open chested delivery. Physical fitness and drills and diet have become more important than innate, natural flair. Doug Walters would never have survived junior cricket in the naughties. Australian cricket became beige apart from a few deranged escapees like Warne or Ponting or Symonds.

Lehmann is changing that. The unusual is being encouraged because oddly, despite the way it appears from the outside, they make great team men because they love their mates, win or loss, but it takes guidance. It takes understanding. It takes acceptance.

The lack of it is why Pietersen has been lost to England - after all, these blokes are hard work.

Whether Lehmann had a hand in Andrew Symonds presenting that cap or not, it was an act of forgiveness, of apology, an act that builds men beyond the pettiness of their own achievement. It was an act of healing for Symonds, for Clarke, for Australian cricket.

Welcome home Roy.

Peter Langston is a community presenter for the Black Dog Institute, the original cricketragic and casual sports journalist for ABC radio. He recently appeared on Conversations with Richard Fidler. Peter has bipolar disorder.