ONE OF the most annoying cliches to a sports journalist is the one that goes: “What happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room.”

This particular riposte to a question is usually delivered by a club official or team manager to quash rumours of some rift in the camp.

It is particularly frustrating for reporters as what the club or team are really saying is: “We know that you know something, but we are confident that we have ensured that the situation is water-tight and you won’t find out any more.”

It is in essence not a denial, but it ensures that the journalist is denied what they felt was probably shaping up into a decent tale.

So it is not often you would hear someone in my job say this, but why can’t Kevin Pietersen for once keep a few of his opinions in-house!

There can be no doubting that KP knows how to use a phone and a laptop – sadly he is all too ready to use them as a means of mass communication.

As a result he sits out the final Test (a three match series is never enough against a side like South Africa surely?!) against Graeme Smith’s superb team which starts at Lord’s tomorrow.

And you wouldn’t blame the England selectors if they are having thoughts of leaving him sat on the sidelines for good – his chances of participating in England’s defence of the World Twenty20 title have got to be slim.

It must be galling for the selectors to find that Pietersen plainly has no interest in making a quick phone call, sending an email or even asking for a man-to-man chat when it comes to ironing out his problems with them – KP ensuring they are denied the chance to use the ‘stays in the dressing room’ line.

But I struggle to fathom Pietersen’s motivation when it comes to his public pronouncements.

They never seem to have won him any arguments, and they certainly seem to win him few allies among the authorities, his professional colleagues or even cricket fans.

Sadly the only answer to the riddle would appear to be that KP is so egocentric that he assumes the whole cricketing world revolves around him – maybe sometime soon he sits on the sidelines he will realise it doesn’t.

If I was among his advisers right now I would be hiding all his mobile phones and denying him access to computers while cajoling him to go and talk to the nice people in charge of the England team and set about showing them that he can carry on like a grown-up professional.