Unfazed Conrad preaches perspective in Proteas batting debacles: 'We don't have Amlas and ABs'

Shukri Conrad insists he's not concerned about the Proteas Test batting lineup's continued struggles and believes perspective is important because the side simply doesn't possess the calibre of batters from previous years.

As a result, demanding fans and observers will need to exercise some patience as he and his brains trust work on rectifying a longstanding problem.

"I need to make this point: we don't have a Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis in this batting unit,"  he said after South Africa secured a 2-0 Test series win over the West Indies at the Wanderers on Saturday.

"We've got to find different ways of skinning this cat." 

While the forthright red-ball mentor is right, he also selected various talented stroke-makers with very good first-class averages like Heinrich Klaasen (46), Keegan Petersen (40) and Ryan Rickelton (54), who all failed to make a discernible impact.

In fact, between that trio and the two batting all-rounders used at No 7 - Sen Muthusamy and Wiaan Mulder - they only combined for 170 runs during the two-match series.

That lack of consolidation following the contributions of the top three in Aiden Markram, Dean Elgar and newcomer Tony de Zorzi translated into three significant collapses: 7 for 106 and 10 for 85 in Centurion as well as 8 for 72 in the first innings at the Wanderers.

But Conrad is unperturbed.

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"I'm really not concerned,"  he said.

"People will ask me how I justify that and I'll say I'm a lot wiser now than I was a few weeks ago in terms of how we want to go forward with and with whom. We also realised there's work to be done and we'll have great people to work with