Pakistan team director Mickey Arthur said their failure to click with the bat had cost them in the World Cup as he rued the lack of a perfect game where all the departments perform collectively following Friday's narrow loss to South Africa.

Pakistan made a below-par 270 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium but fought back through their bowlers later, only to go down by a wicket in a thrilling contest.

"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 that pitch, certainly par on that pitch is 300 at least. We haven't put together enough runs," Arthur said.

"And then we haven't put together a bowling performance that goes with it. Tonight I thought was our best bowling performance of the competition. We bowled really well, but I still thought we were under par in terms of the runs that we had.

"It hasn't been for lack of effort, we haven't got enough players in form at the minute, particularly with the bat."

Pakistan's fourth successive defeat after two early wins left them on the brink of elimination from the knockout stages but Arthur said he would not throw in the towel with matches against Bangladesh, New Zealand and England coming up.

"You never know. What I do know is we need to go and assess combinations again, we need to have a look at the holes we have within our team," Arthur said.

"We need to start improving in a lot of areas and we've got to go and finish this tournament with three victories. Every day we'll be trying and striving to do that."