Australia and India may be the best (or worst) of enemies after this Australian summer but when it comes to cashing in Indian Premier League riches, they know they need to be on the same page.

What's more, the likes of superstars Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds will only be available for - at best - a fortnight in the Twenty20 tournament because of Australia's mid-year tour of the West Indies.

While this is still enough time for tensions to resurface, don't expect to see a relapse of the terrible behavior which marred the Australian summer.

Players will want to be on their best behavior to ensure their eye-popping contracts are honored by the billionaire Indian franchise owners and, by extension, the game's most powerful national board.
Individual sponsorship deals - both now and in the future - could also be jeopardised if there is trouble.

In this enviroment, obviously, it wouldn't be smart to disrespect the locals. There again, some players, especially those who know only one way to take charge, can't always help themselves.

This concern may be alleviated by Cricket Australia's long-time ruling that only two players can represent an overseas domestic team at once. This will mean the reassurance some players take from hunting in a ''pack'' - it's easy to be a bully when you have 10 mates by your side - will be missing.

Symonds, for instance, will only have Adam Gilchrist by his side in Hyderabad. Their high-profile Indian teammates will be the mild-mannered trio of V.V.S. Laxman, Rohit Sharma and R.P. Singh.

''I am sure Symonds will be fine with his team-mates, but who knows what may happen on the field when he plays against Mumbai and Harbhajan,'' an IPL insider said. ''It could all blow-up again. That will be interesting. If there are monkey chants from the Indian crowd, like there was in October last year, it will also be interesting to see if Hyderabad sticks up for Symonds and demands action be taken.''

Indian badboy Harbhajan Singh will have ''big brother'' Sachin Tendulkar with him in Mumbai, where - at this stage - it's an Australian-free zone.
This may be a good thing, at least for the time being.

Gilchrist believes the IPL will allow players to form friendships with sometimes hostile overseas rivals because all now share a common bond - helping their team to IPL glory. But there may have been an exception to the rule when it came to Harbhajan.

Hayden will have Mike Hussey for company in a Chennai team captained by M.S. Dhoni, who has become something akin to royalty in the wake of India's triumphant one-day series win over Australia.

''Having a row with Dhoni would be the worst possible thing anyone
could do in Chennai,'' an IPL insider said. ''Hayden won't do that. That not only would be stupid, but in all likelihood he would not be welcome back in year-two. And that would mean big dollars are lost.''

Arguments could also jeopardise private sponsorship deals, which again wouldn't be wise as there will be more riches on offer when the Australia Test team fights to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India in October this year.

The likes of Brett Lee, one of the hottest properties on the sub-continent, Gilchrist and Ponting have all been quick to profit from cricket's ''land of plenty'' in recent years and all of them will want this gravy train to continue.

So will the in-demand Symonds, who was a regular face on Australian commercials this summer and has quickly become one of cricket's top money-earners. The flipside, as all marketing gurus point out, is that controversies do increase profiles.

Despite the unprecedented fall-out sparked by their ugly spat in the Sydney Test, an Indian bubble-gum manufacturer has already approached sworn-enemies Symonds and Harbhajan about featuring in a commercial together.

There's nothing wrong with controversies (up to a point) because they ignite spectator interest and can even spark player performance, but the events in Australia this summer, which were predominantly based around long-time problem-child Harbhajan, didn't do the game any favours.

The whole monkey slur fiasco, along with India's repeat threats to go home unless Harbhajan was cleared, were a disgrace.

Symonds also had his reputation tarnished and it's hoped CA chief James Sutherland followed up on his promise to discuss with the Queenslander his patchy behaviour before the IPL season begins.

Hayden only expressed what the rest of the Australian team was feeling (and, for that matter, the majority of the Australian public) when he labelled Harbhajan an ''obnoxious little weed'' in a radio interview. While this again brought into sharp focus a player's right to freedom of speech, the bottom line was it did violate protocol and was just plain silly, especially at the back end of a long summer.

Hayden said recently one by-product of the modern game with its intense and compact nature was that host and visiting nations rarely socialised together during or after matches.

This often meant there was no chance to really get to know what rivals were really like. While someone may be a fire-breathing dragon on the field, off it they could be as gentle as a new-born calf.

The IPL is a chance for players from all nations to finally gain a true sense of perspective about each other. Let's hope they take it.

Jon Pierik is the Cricket Correspondent of the Herald-Sun newspaper in Australia and is one of the country's leading cricket reporters.

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Could not agree more...they are the biggest hypocrites now they want to make up with Harbhajan as they relise that they would like his blessings - Tony McDonald