Winning percentage:

As an All Blacks captaincy apprentice, Sam Cane fashioned the right kind of winning percentage to seal his graduation to the top job.

It sounds impressive: 100 per cent, three wins from three tests at the helm, including a tense

20-16 scrape in Argentina last year without Kieran Read and several other frontliners.

It’s also not out of the ordinary for a team with such a prolonged level of excellence in international competition. As many as 22 All Blacks – including Cane and their very first test captain Jimmy Duncan against Australia in 1903 – boast perfect winning records according to statistics from the ESPNScrum. com website.

Lock Sam Whitelock, who like Cane deputised for Read against lower tier opponents, also has an unblemished six from six while brother Luke and other recent All Blacks Andrew Hore and Ben Smith went one from one.

Now for Cane the bigger task is to maintain that stellar percentage against the major rivals when international rugby finally resumes, having watched and learned from two of the best in Read and Richie McCaw.

The latter is a compelling pick (within New Zealand at least) as the greatest of them all: two Rugby World Cup wins including the 2011 final with a fractured foot, and 97 wins from 110 tests as skipper between 2004 and 2015.

The percentage of 89.1 places McCaw second on the All Blacks’ all-time list, of those who led for

10 tests or more.

And the winner is? Wayne ‘Buck’ Shelford, one of the toughest to don the black jersey whose unbeaten test captaincy over two years (1988 to 1990) ended with 13 wins and a draw, against the Wallabies in Brisbane. Then he was axed for Gary Whetton, causing an outcry and showing even the best winning record is no guarantee of longevity.

Shelford’s 96.4 per cent win record puts him atop the world list of the major rugby nations, narrowly ahead of England’s

Dave Davies (95.5 per cent, 10 wins and a draw from 1921-23), with McCaw’s 89.1 placing him third.

South Africa’s best on that list is Morne du Plessis from the 1970s (86.7 per cent from 15 tests), and Australia’s frontrunner is

John Eales at 76.4 from 55. Another World Cup winner, England and Lions colossus Martin Johnson, ended with a win percentage of 82 (37 from 45).

Read succeeded McCaw after the 2015 World Cup victory and signed off after last November’s bronze medal victory over Wales with an 84.6 per cent win rate (43 from 52 tests).

Read went 20 tests as captain before he experienced his first loss: the 40-29 shock against Joe Schmidt’s Ireland in Chicago in

2016.

McCaw had a narrow scrape in his first test in charge – a 26-25 victory over Wales in Cardiff in

2004 – and won his first nine as skipper before the 21-20 loss to the Springboks in Rustenberg in September 2006.

Ten All Blacks captains