The problem surrounds the games between India and South Africa in Stormont in a few weeks' time. They were announced somewhere around the end of January as likely to take place following confirmation from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). I was working with the ICC at the time and my last port of call there was the Champions Trophy which was in India. I knew they had a TV deal there to play a few games in associate nations, I knew a lot of their guys and I knew I was coming over to Ireland so I put the three together and saw the opportunity. But when we were about to sign the final papers we received communication from the ECB telling us about their concerns.

Because the ICU doesn't own the television rights to the three India v South Africa games, they thought the rights could be sold into the UK and this is at a time when Sky are showing games between England and the West Indies.

There was a problem with match clashes and some muddying of the broadcasting rights into the UK. But our view was that these matches were an important opportunity for us to capitalise on the success at of the World Cup.

We couldn't cede to anyone.

I wouldn't be bitter about the ECB viewpoint and I wouldn't say there's a meanness about it. They have a business to run but it was no different from my perspective. We looked at the pros and the cons, we looked at the offer they made to us to resolve this and decided that none of it stacked up because of what happened to the Irish game. We need to forge ahead and we can't take into consideration their concerns.

This is a vital time for Irish cricket and if it is ever to grow, it has to be now. You see, the World Cup money didn't boost our coffers. We received $15,000 as a participation fee and after going further all of the monies came as a bonus and will be paid to the players.

The only other revenues are down the line and we are hopeful that we might make money from sponsorship and broadcasting. There isn't a lot of money there now and that's why this summer is massive and we need to kick ahead.

We'll get a great financial boost from the games with India and South Africa. We will improve due to the standard we're playing at and because of this the question that really raises its head now is, can we continue to have the players as amateurs? We have to consider semi-pro contracts. The details are sketchy as to which players, for how long, and so on but it's something in our minds. It's important we have players a national coach can call on, on a day-today basis and haemorrhaging our best players to England is no longer good enough so we have to have our best players available full time. We had a timeframe looking at 2009 and now that's been booted out due to our success. The last thing we want to do is rush anything but it is a good thing to contract players and it's something we need to do.

Maybe some people have been looking at the county games since we came back and maybe the crowds have been a little disappointing. In terms on publicity, we have to look at how they were marketed but at the minute we have to prioritise because we have very tight finances and we would much rather publicise games against India and South Africa. The county games are not our priority.

It's the same when it comes to signing overseas players. I know people have raised eyebrows and thought we might have gone much bigger, but again, all that comes back to finances combined with the inconveniences of coming back from the World Cup and straight back into this. It was tough for the coach. But we want to make it easier for everyone and this summer is our only chance. We plan to make the most out of it.

Warren Deutrom is chief executive of the Irish Cricket Union