It was suggested over recent days that some batsmen felt protected enough with all of the modern body armour to turn their heads on the ball, but Robertson said helmets were never designed for such an approach.

"Cricket helmets were designed at a time when it was very much a side-on game and [batsmen were] nowhere near as attacking as [they are] these days," he said. "I think we should always look at safety advancement in sport and if the standards need to be stronger then that's a legacy from the terrible situation with Phillip Hughes."

Robertson, who paid his respects to Hughes in hospital, insisted what happened to the 25-year-old in the Sheffield Shield match between NSW and South Australia on Tuesday afternoon "could've happened to anybody".

"If you mistime the hook shot that means you'll get through it before [the ball], and once you get through it, the weight of the bat will swing your body around and then  you swing your shoulders around and it opens up the back part of your head and neck," he said. "It's a case of anyone can make a mistake ... "

Tony Henson, who passed away two-years-ago, pioneered cricket helmets when he moulded one from glass-fibre-reinforced plastic in 1978.

He disguised it with a cloth cover and sun visor to make it look like a traditional flannel cap. He designed a face guard of clear polycarbonate so it wouldn't be seen from a distance.

"Tony Henson created helmets in the 1970s and he was backed by players like Tony Greig and David Hookes and it helped get things going," Robertson said. "I was only 18, 19, 20, when I worked there and I'd work with the engineer, Claude, who designed the helmets.

"He designed the skullcap part of it and it needed to withstand certain forces and they had an engineering structure that could test those forces. The engineer said the only part of the head that couldn't be protected was the back right and left corner. The problem, though, was players' comfort, players accepting it, and it was quite difficult to convince players back then to wear it."

Robertson, whose childhood helmet was one of the first off the production line and was donated to the Lord's long room, said testing on helmets was extreme. "There was an apparatus that would drop a steel ball on an aluminium head, shoulder and chest body weight," he said.

Hughes was wearing the old version of the Masuri helmet when he was struck by the ball at the SCG.