One of the most successful fast bowlers in cricket, James Anderson, is notorious for his ability to be able to swing the ball when there is moisture in the air. So much so, that he is referred to as James "Clouderson": https://www.quora.com/Why-is-James-Anderson-known-as-Clouder...
Cricket is a rare game where the condition of the tools used to play the game (the ball) is allowed to alter over the duration of the game. This differs from almost all other sports such as baseball, where new balls are used after every hit or less, and in tennis, where new balls are used after a set number of games.
Imagine how different baseball would be if they only used 1 ball per side for the entire game. Within a few innings, the ball will have much more variance and unpredictability.
Sadly it seems to be out of print, but Bob Woolmer’s posthumously published Art and Science of Cricket[0] is an incredibly expansive and throughly researched study of cricket as a sport. It seems to have been really difficult to translate the physics of cricket into actionable things for players, but this book is in my opinion the best attempt.
Actually it is very interesting even to understand what is the difference between legal bowling vs. chucking (> 15 degree flex at elbow at point of release ). Bowling in cricket is not as straightforward as pitching in baseball.
The law actually isn't that the arm can't be flexed/bent. It's that the arm can't straiten more than 15 degrees once it's above shoulder height. So you can have a bent arm as long as you keep the angle more or less the same.
Most people who play cricket are oblivious to the physics, but they know what’s going on at a high level.
Cricketers know that shining the ball will cause swing, and they also know that (usually) the most swing occurs on mild, partly cloudy days. That’s why England has a reputation for swing conditions (if not always great swing bowling) - mild and slightly cloudy is the predominant non-rain condition from about April to October.
Other things here, like the drop/gravity step used to start sprinting, are just things coaches will drill in without thorough explanation.
There are similar levels of abject nonsense in cricket as baseball. It's useful to have proper scientific analysis of these things to counter stuff like "all reverse swing is cheating because it's not scientifically possible" given that some of it clearly has been cheating. And yes various cricket commentators and officials have said just that. One umpire changed a ball on the Pakistan team with no more evidence than "it's swinging so you're cheating" resulting in a walk off.
Beyond that kind of thing it's no more useful to players than differential equations are to David Beckham when he finds the optimal path from a spot kick over the wall into the top corner of the net. He's solved that diffeq but he's not consciously aware of how he's done it and could probably have done so in the time of Roman numerals.
What about coaches? I wonder what state of art softwares look like these days now that iot is so common place. I remember Bob Woolmer, so ahead of his time - had an idea that the batsman would have a mini display so that they can rewatch the last ball before playing the next one.
I couldn't find article but former Pakistan bowler, Sarfaraz Nawaz who is considered the inventor of reverse swing, formed a theory of air and it's pressure on ball while he was traveling on a helicopter.
This article helped me understand the basics of swing, and explains why moisture in the air makes a huge difference, as does the condition of the ball: https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/17104279/the-science...
One of the most successful fast bowlers in cricket, James Anderson, is notorious for his ability to be able to swing the ball when there is moisture in the air. So much so, that he is referred to as James "Clouderson": https://www.quora.com/Why-is-James-Anderson-known-as-Clouder...