Pakistan's director of cricket Mickey Arthur said his team has failed to put together the "perfect game" in this World Cup, the main reason for their struggles at the ongoing showpiece.
Pakistan are virtually out of the World Cup after suffering a narrow one-wicket defeat against South Africa here on Friday, which happened to be their fourth straight loss in the tournament.
While Pakistan need to win all their three remaining games, their fate will also depend on other results.
"...Look to be brutally honest, we haven't put together the perfect game yet. I don't think we've batted well enough yet as a unit. I think certainly par on that pitch is 300 at least. So, we haven't put together enough runs," a disappointed Arthur said at the post-match press conference.
"And then we haven't put together a bowling performance that goes with it. So tonight, I thought it was our best bowling performance of the competition. Thought we bowled really well, but I still thought we were under par in terms of the runs that we had.
"We haven't put the perfect game together yet. Hasn't been for lack of effort, hasn't been for lack of trying, but we just haven't got enough players in form at the minute, particularly with the bat," he added.
Arthur blamed Pakistan's back-end batting collapse as one of the major reasons for his side's defeat against South Africa.
Pakistan started their innings on a strong note and were 225 for six by the 40th over before the lower middle-order and the tail-enders failed to do anything significant and were bowled out for 270.
"It was a mixture of both. I don't think we batted particularly well at the back end. But, we always set ourselves up to have. You've got to have one of your top four in at over 40," he said.
"And, you talk about the success that we've had over the last year; we've had one of our top four generally getting hundreds. We've had two hundreds this competition so far in the same game.
"So, we've had players get in. We've had players get starts. We haven't had players go through. And I don't think we managed the last five overs particularly well tonight," he added.
Arthur said Pakistan were 30 runs short of what would have been a winning total.
"There was still, at one point, in the 45th over, I remember saying to the dressing room a run a ball gets us 295 and a little bit more we get to 300. I know we would have defended 300 tonight (Friday)," he said.
"So, I don't think we managed that back end particularly well at all. And, we left 10-12 balls out there that we didn't face."
Before the World Cup, Pakistan played an ODI series at home against New Zealand, where some flaws in their batting were noticed.