Reminiscent of the countless ball tampering incidents in the sport of cricket. [1]
Of the England cricket team in 2005:
"It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish. And through trial and error I finally settled on the type of spit for the task at hand. It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing." He found Murray Mints worked the best.
Polishing the ball is acceptable in cricket (you polish one side and leave the other rough so the bowler can produce swing). What's not acceptable (but still happens) is players will rough up the other side with foreign objects.
That's fascinating, because I play competitive wiffle ball and we similarly scuff up new balls before using them- the curve characteristics are completely different vs a smooth one.
Cricket is a bit different to baseball because polishing the ball is an accepted part of the game. By polishing one side of the ball and allowing the other-side to naturally grow dull you alter the flight characteristics of the ball - it's how you can achieve movement through the air or 'swing'.
The ball is rarely replaced - it is very much intended for the condition of the ball to deteriorate over the course of an innings various tactics revolve around when to make bowling changes as some bowlers specialize with the 'new' ball which is shiny and hard and others have a style designed to exploit the older ball which is softer and more dull. There are certain time milestones that elapse in the match where captain can elect to replace a old worn ball with a new shiny ball.
The illegal part is ball tampering rubbing some foreign substance against the ball such as dirt or mud to weight it down or scuffing up the ball with something (A player on the Australian team was caught using a strip of sandpaper, which was a big scandal over here recently).
At school, where such rules were not enforced, some kids used hair gel on one side of the ball. Most were too unskilled to really exploit it but a good bowler could achieve what felt like a metre of savage sideways swing, enough that a ball that started out looking like a wide would finish up whistling past the ears of the hapless batsman.
Of the England cricket team in 2005:
"It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish. And through trial and error I finally settled on the type of spit for the task at hand. It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing." He found Murray Mints worked the best.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_tampering#Examples_and_al...