In his new book Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed explains that “failure to learn from mistakes has been one of the single greatest obstacles to human progress”. Syed shows how, in hospitals, the criminal justice system, politics and beyond, a tendency to write off mistakes as “complications” or “accidents” prevents lessons being learned from them. As a result, mistakes are doomed to be repeated again and again with tragic consequences: nearly 400,000 patients die every year in America alone because of avoidable medical errors.

Unfortunately, a lack of black box thinking is one instance of cricket mirroring life. As Andy Bull highlighted after Phillip Hughes’s death on 27 November last year, cricket has had far more “freak” deaths than it would care to acknowledge. It has imagined each fatality to be a horrendous one-off. Producing a comprehensive report after every such accident – cricket’s equivalent of the black box in each aeroplane – has never become the norm.

Many aspects of Hughes’s death were indeed freakish: in medical history, only 100 cases of a neck injury causing haemorrhage in the brain, as happened to Hughes, have ever been reported. Yet Cricket Australia have not imagined that this meant there were no wider lessons to learn from the accident. It immediately increased the medical presence at all Cricket Australia matches, and made wearing helmets that comply with the 2013 British Safety Standard on Helmets compulsory from 1 October this year; while such helmets do not cover the back of the neck, where Hughes was hit, they make the chances of an accident less likely. Cricket Australia have also commissioned an independent review of Hughes’s death from the New South Wales state coroner, which is due to report soon. The result has been to make an accident on the cricket field – not just one akin to that Hughes suffered – less likely.

Such vigilance has not been shared elsewhere in the cricketing world. All Test countries have now signed up to the 2013 British Safety Standard, but compliance is left up to the boards themselves, and not the ICC, to the chagrin of Tony Irish, the executive chairman of the international players’ union Fica. “We have proposed to the ICC that there should be minimum enforceable standards across all countries regarding the use of compliant helmets and regulations relating not only to batsmen but also close fielders and wicket keepers,” he says. “We say this should be centralised whilst the ICC says it should be up left up to each board to implement on the detail.” Angus Porter, the chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association in England, agrees: “We need the ICC to play a role to coordinate efforts.”

The ICC’s relatively hands-off approach is not working: only in Australia is it actually mandatory for players in official matches to wear helmets that adhere with the safety standard. A significant proportion of domestic and international players around the world wear helmets that do not meet the new standards. Quite how many no one knows: according to Irish, no one has yet collated the figures, although Fica are in the process of doing so.

One of cricket’s traits is the game’s fetishisation of statistics. How remarkable, then, that there exists no comprehensive record of the number of serious injuries, or even fatalities, to have occurred because of cricket.

These occur far more often than many realise. Since Hughes, at least four more cricketers have died as a result of injuries sustained on the field: last November an Israeli umpire died after being struck on the jaw by a ball; in April a club cricketer in India died after a collision with another player in the field; in July a club cricketer in England died after being struck on the chest while batting. And just last Friday the Namibian international cricketer Raymond van Schoor died from a stroke suffered in a match for his country against Free State.

The reaction to Van Schoor’s death might be instructive. Like Hughes, Van Schoor was a 25-year-old international batsman who compatriots expected great things of. Inevitably given his far higher profile around the world, Hughes’ passing attracted many magnitudes more attention from the press. Yet that does not mean that more attention should be given to what, if anything, can be learned from Hughes’ death than Van Schoor’s.

The problem is that Cricket Namibia lack the financial clout of Cricket Australia to fund a comprehensive independent review of their own. In times like these, surely, the ICC should be paying for such a review, but so far there is no news of one forthcoming. To Irish it exposes the problem of the lack of an ICC Medical Committee since it was disbanded after the restructuring of the ICC last year. “If the ICC Medical Committee was still in existence I’m sure it could have played some role in looking into the situation and advising on whether or not there are any lessons to be learned from it,” he says. “Any death or seriously debilitating injury arising in a cricket context should be reviewed.”

A year ago a tragedy at the Sydney Cricket Ground struck at the very fabric of Australia and beyond. Anxiety about player safety on the field spread “all the way through world cricket, and rightfully so,” as Chris Rogers said recently. “When you look back and think about all those incidents happening, it is kind of nice to be up here in the commentary box. It’s a bit of a relief.” Mitchell Johnson has admitted questioning whether ‘‘he was doing the right thing’’ in using his brutal bouncer to harass England during the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash.

Since Hughes’s death Cricket Australia has led the way in protecting its players. But what cricket does to prevent such accidents, and how it responds to them, should not be left at the whim of individual boards. The ICC needs to be empowered to act for the safety of cricketers all around the world. Cricket needs to stop regarding terrible accidents as one-offs, and ensure there is a systematic and rigorous protocol to learn from each one to make the sport safer.