A gang of four first-class cricketers sold their skills as a going lot in Wellington club cricket recently and will spend the summer of 2001/02 doing battle for the Eastern Suburbs club.

Stephen Hotter, Tim Boyer, Scott Golder and Paul Hitchcock have been part of the Wellington club scene over several years but decided over an off-season drink to play together for any club that was interested in picking them up as one unit.

Hotter was initially a slow starter as he wasn't sure at the time whether he would play this season at all.

But he decided last week to throw in his lot with the trio.

Hotter said his reason for making the change to Eastern Suburbs was his desire to play Pearce Cup cricket in the capital.

Hotter captained the Wellington Collegians club which failed to win promotion from the Hazlett Trophy section of the inter-city competition last year.

The decision had nothing to do with Wellington Collegians, it was purely a desire to play in the higher grade. Ironically, for Hotter, it was his first club, North City that won promotion 16 points ahead of Collegians last summer.

"We came so close last year. But we lost our first one-dayer to North City and then they won an outright decision on a day when we should have had an outright ourselves but because the covers leaked we couldn't play. But there is no doubt North City was the better team and deserved to go up," Hotter said.

The decision to make the change had been the subject of some conversation in the Capital.

Boyer, who played for Wellington as recently as two summers ago, before deciding to play his club cricket in the Horowhenua-Kapiti competition, felt he didn't want to travel every weekend to play.

Golder was a member of the University side which was relegated last year and he wanted to keep his chances to play for Wellington open by playing for a Pearce Cup side while Hitchcock was looking for a change from his Petone Riverside club.

Hotter said Easts were interested because fast bowler Carl Bulfin was staying in Blenheim this summer and Wellington and Otago batsman Stephen Mather was now living in Australia.

"And I play a lot of basketball with the Easts guys during the winter. I'm coming to the end of my career and am quite excited about playing alongside Jason Wells, if he plays, Lance Dry and Jeetan Patel," Hotter said.

The fall-out for the University club has been serious with its New Zealand opener and Wellington captain Matthew Bell opting to move to Stokes Valley for the new season.

© CricInfo