Not much has been said this week about Tom Maynard the cricketer – a young man whose career path had looked destined to lead to a long-term place in the England team.

His pedigree was remarkable. He had attended Whitchurch High School in Cardiff and was in the same school year as Wales’ Grand Slam-winning captain Sam Warburton and Tottenham’s outstanding footballer Gareth Bale.

Although he started his career with his native Glamorgan, Maynard’s career had blossomed after joining Surrey – averaging more than 40 in all three domestic competitions and having gone on tour with the England Lions in 2012.

But Maynard’s story is tragic, having been electrocuted before being struck by a Tube train early on June 18 last year.

His family, in a statement this week, said: “The results of the inquest do not define our son.”

The findings they are referring to are the ones showing that Maynard was a regular recreational drug user and that, on the night of his death, at the age of just 23, he had taken drugs and been drinking.

If any good can come out of such a tragedy, it is that cricket, and perhaps team sport in general, will be forced to face up to the fact that unknown numbers of their participants are using substances such as cocaine and ecstasy.

A handful of players have been caught in the past – they include Ed Giddins, who was handed a year-long ban for cocaine use in the mid-1990s but went on to play four Tests for England, while Pakistan seamer Abdur Rehman was banned for three months last summer having tested positive for cannabis during his spell at Somerset.

But, with more than 400 professional cricketers in this country, the ECB has probably only managed to scratch the surface of the problem, with Michael Vaughan, the former England cricket captain, saying it would be “Naive to think Tom’s is an isolated case”.

Angus Porter, chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, pointed out that, had Maynard had anything as simple as even a hair strand test in the three months before his death, his cocaine abuse would have been flagged up.

This should not be about taking punitive measures – Maynard wasn’t taking performance-enhancing substances. But there must be no more tragedies before sport gets serious about drug use.