How do they do it?

As he moves towards the crease Murali Kartik moves the ball quickly from hand to hand just before going into the delivery stride and Pietersen bounces the ball up and down in his left hand before moving it into his right at roughly the same stage of his action. Neither of them seems to look at the ball or even worry about its alignment and as for spreading the fingers to gain purchase on the ball there's no evidence.

I've tried it recently (it was a bad spell anyway so it wasn't going to do much harm) and lost what little control I had. It's a mystery how they do it.