David Curtain's prescription is so thorough that he recommends even for bowling machine operators to wear helmets henceforth. This is as well as all batsmen, in games and in the nets when facing fast and medium-pace bowlers, wicketkeepers when standing up, close fieldsmen in all position except slips, umpires and ancillary personnel at practice if they are within range of the batsmen. Curtain draws the line only at helmets for bowlers, saying it would constitute too fundamental a change to the way the game is played. Cricket Australia has adopted most of these standards.

The helmets must be an updated kind mandated in Australia since the Phillip Hughes tragedy, though Curtain leaves open whether or not helmets should incorporate a so-called "stem guard" across the back of the neck. Some batsmen are experimenting with stem guards, but Curtain says more evaluation of their efficacy is needed.

Curtain notes a push for the approval of substitutes in cricket henceforth, though it is outside his terms of reference, and Cricket Australia is taking it up with the ICC this month.

Curtain recommends defibrillators at all grounds, as well as an annual review of medical facilities and protocols. CA is with him. He recommends that medical staff have sole discretion as to whether or not a player who has been hit and concussed continues in the match, and goes as far as suggesting that doctors could force a player who is especially vulnerable to head injuries out of cricket altogether. But he draws the line at screening.

The one nit that Ian Chappell, for instance, would pick with Curtain's review is that it does not address the methods of modern batsmen against short-pitched bowling. "It's a waste of time because it's not including technique," Chappell said late last year. "What's the point?" Chappell's view is not without foundation. In other sports – American football, for instance – there is disturbing evidence that safer helmets lead to more carelessness, even recklessness from players and can be counter-productive. But it is hard to imagine how Curtain's review could have solved that problem.

Otherwise, this review covers all the bases. But threading and weighing it down is one sombre verity. Not even the most modern helmet would have protected poor Hughes, "given the location of where Phillip was struck". The medical staff at the ground could have done no more to save him. His death remains what it was at the time, a tragic freak accident, against incalculable odds. The Curtain blueprint well may spare some unknown future cricketer, and that makes it worthwhile anyway.

"Never again do we want to see a tragedy of that nature happen on a cricket field," said Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland. adding that the already small risk would be further reduced by the adoption of Curtain's recommendations. But he knows what everyone divined at that terrible time, that the risk never can be eliminated altogether.

For the next step, it is over to the NSW coroner.