Joe Root has dismissed David Warner’s jibe that he will need to “take the surfboard off his front leg” if he and England are to triumph in Australia this winter.

Warner fired the first shots in the phoney Ashes war by highlighting Root’s failure to score a hundred in Australia, suggesting that Test cricket’s second-highest run-scorer tends to get out lbw a lot.

“Josh Hazlewood tends to have his number quite a lot. He will have to take the surfboard off his front leg,” said Warner, who retired from international cricket last year but is in England with London Spirit in The Hundred and set to play against Root’s Trent Rockets at Lord’s on Thursday.

Asked on a media call if he had laughed off the jibe, Root said: “Just that. I can’t have any control on how people see the game or talk

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