Given this correspondent's campaign over recent years on the danger specifically of brain injury, it is understandable that I have fielded a lot of comments in the past 24 hours asserting that this tragic episode of Phillip Hughes underlines those dangers.

Of course it does, and so does the fact that after the initial injury to Hughes' brain, it seems likely there was another hit – in perhaps a classic case of second-impact syndrome – when he collapsed down on to the pitch.

But to my eyes, rather than anyone engaging in any notably dangerous activity that should be banned, or any problem with process that exacerbated the dangers, the whole thing looked to be just one of those one-in-10-million chances that Hughes was simply unlucky enough to be on the wrong end of. If we can accept that in most sports there is a one-in-many-million chance of bad injury through specific actions, it stands to reason that when those sports are played often enough, very occasionally we will see tragic results like this.

In cricket in Australia, the most memorable example of a bouncer doing serious damage was during the Centenary Test of 1977, when a Bob Willis bouncer felled Rick McCosker in the first innings and broke his jaw, only for McCosker to return with it heavily bandaged for the second innings to score 25 in a 54-run partnership with Rod Marsh. Triumph, we cried!

Then, we thrilled to the dangers McCosker stared down, the risks he took to overcome tragedy, all in the name of winning the game – just as we did with John Sattler in the Souths grand final against Manly in 1970, and Sam Burgess' fractured cheekbone this year against Canterbury.