I have a sphere. Attached to it is a long cylinder. I would like to animate the cylinder in such
a way that when the sphere moves the cylinder would moves in the opposite direction similar to a rope attached to a ball.

In brief:

When sphere moves forwards, the rope moves backward.
The part of the rope attached would move to a lesser extent to the back while the part further from the joint would move further back.

Could someone please point me to the basics needed to achieve this animation? I saw a few animations on youtube e.g. swinging rope using ncloth, fish moving along a path, etc. But they did not help.

thx