The myth of Sunil Gavaskar's great record against West Indian fast bowlers

I have heard this mentioned multiple times while watching or reading cricket - Sunil Gavaskar has a great record against the fearsome West Indian fast bowlers of the 70s & 80s. And I have heard one of those fast bowlers(Holding to be specific) not quite agreeing with that. So, I decided to take a closer look.

At a quick glance, Sunil seems to have a great record against the West Indian team.

vs WI 27 matches 48 inning 6 nos 2749 runs HS 236* avg 65.45 100s 13 50s 7

vs WI in WI is even more impressive:
13 matches 24 innings 4 nos 1404 runs HS 220 avg 70.20 100s 7 50s 4

And since he played the majority of his cricket during the time of the fearsome west indian fast bowling attack, it's assumed that he scored heavily against them.

However,on closer examination, the picture looks very very different.

This is Gavaskar's 1st series against the WI in WI(1971). He averages a whopping 154.80 in this series. Take a look at the list of WIan bowlers in this series. Not one great fast bowler there.
The performance in this series stands out. But, this is not an example of him playing excellently against the great WIan fast bowling attack. So, lets move on to the next series .

This is his 2nd series against the WI. This was in India(1974). He averages just 27.00 in this series. The WIan bowling lineup had 1 great fast bowler - Andy Roberts. Not a great performance. Let's move ahead.

In the India in WI 1975 series, he had an average of 55.71(which is excellent). The West Indian lineup had 2 great fast bowlers - Holding & Roberts. However - Roberts played in only 2 of the 4 matches. And the rest of the bowling lineup was nothing much to write home about.
This was an excellent performance, no doubt. But, can this series be used as the example of Sunny standing up to the fearsome WIan fast bowling lineup(given that there were only 2 of them for the series and one of them didn't play half the games)? I think we can reasonably conclude that this isn't matching of the reputation he has. So, let's move ahead.

WI in India(1978/79): Sunny averaged 91.50 in this series. This was a 6 match series. There was 1 great fast bowler who played a marginal role in this series - Malcom Marshall played just 3 tests and bowled just 78 overs in all. S.Clarke was the main bowler in this series. He was very good, indeed. But, he isn't one who comes to the mind when talking about the fearsome WIan bowling attack of the 70s. Let's go on.

India in WI(82/83) : He averaged 30.00 in 5 matches. This was a great WIan fast bowling lineup: Roberts, Holding, Marshall & Garner. For his credit, Sunny did score a test 100 against this attack. However, on the whole, he was quite ordinary in this series.

His final series against the WI was when WI toured India in 1983/84. He averaged 50.50 in 5 tests. This series had WI with 3 great fast bowlers in their lineup - Holding,Marshall & Roberts. Roberts played only 2 out of the 6 tests. Sunny was the top run getter in the series and he had a healthy average. And he scored them against 2 great quicks. His best innings of 236* came with 3 of the quicks in the bowling lineup. This series seems to be Sunny's best in terms of performing against the fast bowling attack of the WI. However, the performance doesn't quite match the myth which seems to take into account the loads of runs scored against the weaker WIan attacks. A fair conclusion would be that Sunny played great against the WIan fast bowlers. However, he wasn't as good against them as he is being made out to be nowadays.

It must be noted that I am going purely by stats since I wasn't born in that era and I accept that this isn't a perfect mechanism t0 help make judgments on things which are not black & white. And I have watched enough cricket to understand that rating a player isn't a black & white exercise which can be achieved purely by comparing stats. So, if someone who actually watched cricket in that era and has an open mind to discussions can comment on how he saw things back then, it would be perfect. In any case, that's not going to stop me from publishing my first blog first. :)