Because he was, even the ones from the era with exceptional home conditions (Australia of 50s and South Africa) do not come close to the SR of Trueman, and even his WPI (2.27) in the 60s tours was above the away WPI of his peers in Lindwall (2.0), Davo (2.04), Hall (1.90 only counted Windies and Aus), Statham (1.76) and so forth, just denying the obvious reality here.
as if the 1962-63 Ashes wasn't extremely flat as well, but alright.
one of the few venues both toured.
so Lillee doesn't have a first tour to Windies? fine, we just compare the second, and as I said, the axe was on Freddie's career in 1954 tour of Windies
Lillee got TWO more, and this also comes down to the level of competition for wickets.
That's why I don't rate him above, But below Lillee (or Wasim) he isn't, He can't do anything if he only gets wicket specifically designed for draws against strong batting lineups. If he did have an ATG away series in the West Indies or Australia I'd probably rate him in the GOAT chat.
Winning 2 out of the 3 resulting games from 10 games all in flatter serieses in an achievement at the every level, now you're doing blind average reading rather than reading into the context of the series.
I rate Ashwin the bowler on level with people like Kohli, that alone tells you I value home performance.
there's a significant gap between their performance against the top two collectively, and it's not like the level of defecit in their WI records increase or decrease on removing their first serieses.