He made a spectacular test debut scoring 774 runs in his first series against the West Indies helping India win for the first time in the Caribbean. From then until his retirement in 1987 he was a mainstay of the Indian batting line-up. In 1983 Gavaskar broke one of the oldest and most prestigous records in the game: Donald Bradman's 29 test centuries. Gavaskar still holds the record for the most number of test centuries (34) and is the only player to score centuries in each innings three times. Gavaskar was also the first batsman to reach 10,000 test runs and held the record for the most number of runs till broken by Alan Border.
Gavaskar was captain of the Indian team on several occasions in the late 70's and early 80's though here his record is more mixed. Often equipped with weak bowling attacks he tended to use conservative tactics which resulted in a large number of draws. Still he had several successes as captain especially a 2-0 victory over Pakistan in 1979 and a victory in the World Championhip of Cricket held in Australia in 1985. On the downside there was a heavy defeat against Pakistan in 1982 which cost him the captaincy for a while.
Overall he played 125 test matches and scored 10,122 runs at an average of 51.12. He scored 34 centuries and 45 half-centuries with a highest score of 236.