'Pretty clear on way forward' – Arthur confident despite series loss

Arthur believes he is "pretty clear on the way to go" for his team in red-ball cricket, with several positives from the tour. Pakistan next play Test cricket in September, when they feature in the ICC Test Championship.

"We start our next Test series in September, and everybody goes into white-ball mode now. We're certainly a far better white-ball team at the minute than we are a Test unit, but we'll get there," said Arthur on Monday, 14 January.

"We've realised the brand we want to play. We've had a look at personnel, at who's going to fit in going forward. So I'm pretty clear on the way to go, and certainly come September, when the Test championship starts, we've certainly got a team that can play in all conditions, and we need to identify what those skill sets are."

The 3-0 didn't "sit well" with the high standards of the team, but "I can't however, fault attitude, and I can't ever fault work ethic", the coach insisted.

"The boys have worked incredibly hard on all their skills, they have been fantastic. They've tried as hard as can be throughout this Test series, so from that sense, I'm proud of them. The other sense, we have standards, we can never accept losing a Test series."

Arthur credited South Africa's bowlers for the result, for how they "kept coming and coming" at Pakistan's relatively inexperienced batting line-up. He also lavished praise Shan Masood and Babar Azam, who were Pakistan's leading run-scorers in the series with tallies of 228 and 221 respectively.

"We had our moments and we didn't take them. That's disappointing, but saying that, South Africa were outstanding," he said. "Particularly their bowling. The bowling just kept coming and coming at us, and the one thing that was always going to be tested was our young batting group.

"A couple have come through nicely and a couple maybe not, but that was always going to be tested.

"I thought Babar Azam was outstanding. I think he's taken his cricket to another level. The question marks that were always around Babar will certainly disappear now. I thought the way he'd played this series was amazing and he'll just go from strength to strength now. I thought Shan Masood played exceptionally well at the top of the order and at three," he added.

"Asad Shafiq played two innings that were significant and everybody else chipped in along the way. We didn't get enough runs clearly, but saying that, the 430 at Newlands was probably just too many from a very good bowling unit. We've got some work to do particularly in these conditions."