The bats are out, but what cricket really needs is answers.

Public illustrations of grief have become an art form in recent years but the tributes to Phil Hughes have taken poignancy to a new level. If only the same amount of consideration had gone into how his death should be filed.

Three days ago I wrote about how cricket should react to the fact a player had been dealt a potentially fatal blow by a ball unleashed by another cricketer, all in the spirit of sporting warfare.

As I write this, 24 hours after Phillip Hughes died from his injuries, the International Cricket Council has yet to acknowledge that it has any responsibility to investigate whether players could be safer on the field. Thank goodness for Cricket Australia, which has launched its own investigation.

Hughes fell in a domestic Sheffield Shield match, a game that was under Cricket Australia's jurisdiction, but the all-powerful ICC must recognise that it cannot simply allow the show to go on. It has a responsibility to protect its athletes that outweighs any short-term commercial concerns. Nobody saw this coming, but a young life has been lost and two young professional careers have been shattered because cricket is a dangerous game. If it happens again, the ICC will stand accused of negligence.

The Dubai-based body paid tribute to Hughes yesterday, including some helpful biographical information for those media outlets that perhaps had not heard of this 25-year-old holder of 25 Baggy Green caps.

Its staff were busy on social media yesterday, publicising many of the magnificent #putyourbatsout gestures taking place across the global sports community. Bats were laid out at grounds from the Adelaide Oval to Colombo to Lord's itself, and organisations as disparate as Arsenal FC and the Gaelic Athletic Association (which put out two hurls). The ICC can be happy it has taken part in the process of cricket coming to terms with this tragedy. But when will it bother to address the elephant in the room?

I am not sure why the Australia team doctor, Peter Brukner, used the term 'freakish' when describing how Hughes was killed by subarachnoid haemorrhage, a major bleed on the brain caused by a burst artery. A rare occurrence, yes, but freakish?

How many genuine bouncers have been bowled in cricket since the Bodyline tour of 1932-33 made them fashionable? A million? Ten million? How many have been bowled at speeds above 85mph on rock-hard pitches? Whatever the number, whatever the odds, the death of Phil Hughes has proved that eventually, the law of averages was going to dictate that somebody would be killed. Throw enough darts at the board and you will eventually hit the bullseye. Bouncers must not be outlawed, but exposure to vulnerable areas of the body must be.

Cricket is a rich game. Indian TV has made it richer than ever. Every country that is affiliated to the ICC, including Scotland, has benefited from this largesse. It has the money to not just investigate but reform the type of protection available to batsmen and fielders who expose themselves to a 6oz projectile in the interests of making a living.

Once it has reformed the technology so that all helmets to be used in professional cricket are 100% death-proof, and perfected the technology so that the helmets do not inhibit players, it has the money to enforce the use of this protection. As Paul Hoffmann said earlier in the week, all it would take is an extra ring of protection around the base of the current helmets. Maybe even a piece of reinforced rubber?

The 'freak accident' defence is a lazy way of saying this hasn't happened before and it surely won't happen again. Current and former Test cricketers have been trotting it out all week and it is not much help to Sean Abbott, the bowler of the bouncer whose career is in tatters because cricket failed to heed the warning signs of hundreds of bludgeoned noses, cut cheeks and bruised foreheads.

Hughes is not the first cricketer to die on the field but the others all died on club grounds, where it will never be possible to make the game 100% safe. Professionals, where the game is more lethal, should be protected.

In my own playing days I saw an umpire felled by a ball thrown in from the boundary. He was a middle-aged teacher, and I understand he never worked again. That was a freak accident.

I also saw a No.11 batsman, who was wearing a helmet with no face protection, deflect a short ball into his eye. It was a horrific, bloody scene and I am not sure if he ever regained full use of the eye.

That was not a freak accident. It was a result of the simple reality that cricket is played with a hard and heavy ball that is thrown with as much force as man can muster.

The tributes have been touching, but Hughes, 63 not out for eternity, will have died for nothing if anyone else joins him back in the pavilion. And the San Marino Grand Prix of 1994 proved that there is no such thing as a premature reaction to tragedy. The show must go on, but in the background, the ICC needs to act to make it safer.