Australia's Allan Border is the leader in the current captaincy race in cricket. The greatest skipper in history, Border played cricket Down Under between 1978 and 1994, incredibly representing Australia for 16 years! He stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to stats and captained the Baggy Greens on 93 occasions (Stephen Fleming and David Lloyd are more than 10 test behind on 80 and 74).

Within this equation, Proteas fans are pretty pleased with their killer captain, Graeme Smith, who is now only midway through his career at 27 years of age and is briskly hauling in cricket's legends on the stats table.

Longevity is tricky in cricket captaincy - just ask Micheal Vaughan and Nasser Hussain who have both set the tone for five-year stints at the helm of English cricket. The likes of Border-Fleming-Lloyd are few and far between and, with the demands of modern cricket, understandably so.

Today it's Tests, ODIs, 20Twenties and the the added commitments of the IPL. Noticing the ''credit deficit'' Smith suffers, Proteas fans are quick to rush to haul out the records and again remind doubters of the South African captain's class.

I've analysed his stats and, because Smith himself acknowledges he is only at the midpoint of his career, I've every confidence he'll turn out to be the GREATEST cricket captain of all time. His current stats are: 70 Tests, 140 ODIs and 55 20Twenties.

Doubling them up, Smith stands head and shoulders about the rest: 140 Tests, 280 ODIs and 110 20Twenties! That's enough to silence his greatest critics and I'm sure he knows it.

Micheal Atherton, Vaughan and Hussain have long ago been cut down to size by the South African who is now at No.4 on the cricket captaincy table. Smith will go to No.3 in 2008, passing David Lloyd's record during the Australia tour in December.

Smith currently tops the ODI batsmen table and was, along with Kevin Pietersen, the top scorer in the nPower Test series in England. He holds the record for the highest opening stand (455) and has an average in Tests of just about 50. He's approaching 6,000 runs in Tests and will surely end his career somewhere near 12,000 runs overall.

With 20Twenty cricket and the IPL, Smith will have smashed every record in the captaincy books by 2013 and I'm looking foward to his next five years. Forget Ricky Ponting or even Allan Border, at the end of the day it's all about the greatest captain in the history of cricket, Graeme Smith.