Physics of Cricket (2005)

Thanks for the links!

The first one appears to be missing all the pictures and figures he refers to.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/1143037.html seems to be equivalent but with the images.

And one has to plan for it, don't use your reverse swing bowler early on or start with best swing bowling playing batsman etc...

The correct definition of the legal action is "whatever it took to keep Muralitharan bowling".

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.

The England team famously hired a physicist as a swing consultant.

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.

Not anymore, now that women’s cricket is being heavily promoted.

All the top level players and commentators were referring to “batters” during this past Australian summer.

Times are a-changin.