Nottinghamshire teammates Harry Gurney and Stuart Broad have turned the pub they co-own together into a takeaway and temporary village shop in an attempt to save jobs at the establishment following the closing of pubs by the prime minister on Friday.

Along with friend Dan Cramp, Broad and Gurney have owned the Three Crowns pub in Leicestershire since 2018 and as pubs looked increasingly likely to be affected by the social distancing measures introduced to combat the spread of Covid-19, the pair have tried to keep the pub thriving in uncertain times.

Talking to ESPNcricinfo, Gurney said: “We started this back on Monday, when the prime minister said to avoid pubs and then when he updated that advice to pubs having to close on Friday, we were three or four days ahead of the curve.

“The idea – the reason we started doing it – was job preservation, because we knew that the trade of the pubs was going to pretty much vanish overnight, and we’ve got people who rely on us to pay their mortgages. We wanted to find a way to generate income in order that we were able to continue paying people throughout the crisis.

“I tried to nip it in the bud. I called a meeting last Monday morning of all the key management and just said to them: ‘listen, I’m expecting that we’re going to get closed down in the next week or two, so let’s be prepared for it. We’ll do everything we can not to make any redundancies.'”