[4] After this performance, his father was approached to discuss a place in the touring team for him, but it was decided that he would continue with his studies with the aim of going to Oxford University later in 1929.

[8] In 1932, Melville was the Oxford captain in his own right, but his season was disrupted by injury – though not to the same degree as Moore's had been in 1931 – when he broke his collarbone while batting in the match against the Free Foresters by colliding with his partner, Pieter van der Bijl.

[10] On his return to the side in late June, he was successful with the ball, taking a hat-trick and nine wickets in the game against H. D. G. Leveson Gower's XI, and he finished top of the University bowling averages.

Unusually, though no longer captain, he returned to Oxford in 1933 for a fourth season and a fourth Blue and although he featured in fewer than half the University side's matches, he hit his highest Oxford score, an innings of 127 made in less than two-and-a-quarter hours against a very weak Surrey attack at The Oval.

Facing a big West Indian total, Sussex, with Melville as stand-in captain, opened with Ted Bowley and John Langridge, and Manny Martindale and Herman Griffith were both bowling with aggressively and using leg theory, the tactic that had been used in the Bodyline controversy of the previous winter by England in Australia.

"Sussex, renowned for their attractive and enterprising hitting, developed a somewhat stodgy game in their efforts to finish at the top and they thus defeated their own ends," it said.

[19] The following year, however, he captained Transvaal in six of its seven Currie Cup matches as the team shared the title with Natal; he had little success with the bat himself, scoring just 109 runs at an average of 15.57 and did not bowl at all.

The five matches suffered at times, Wisden wrote, from "slow-motion methods adopted by both sides" and culminated in a timeless Test that nevertheless had to be left as a draw after 10 days.

[23] Respite for Melville from this series of mediocre personal performances with a match for a Combined Transvaal XI against the MCC touring team immediately after the third Test defeat.

[2] Almost immediately, he was forced to stand down again and it was feared that his back injury had returned; in fact, he was not injured, but his wife had contracted poliomyelitis and while she recovered he looked after their children.

The 1947 English cricket season was dominated by the run-getting exploits of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich, and the South African side led by Melville suffered at the hands of both batsmen in a hot summer made for batting.

In the first half of the season, however, Melville's own batting form was almost as good, despite breaking a bone in his little finger early on and also straining his thigh during the first Test.

[35] The rest of the Lord's Test was less successful, however, and the South Africans lost the match after being forced to follow on, with Melville making just 8 in the second innings.

[37] The fifth Test, played in what Wisden called "extreme heat", ended in a tense draw with the South Africans, seeking 451 for what would have been a record-breaking win, finishing at 423 for seven wickets: Melville dropped down the batting order in this game and scored 39 and 6.

[40] Though the tour was not successful in terms of the Tests, Melville won praise for his captaincy and for his own performances, and was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in the 1948 edition of the Almanack.

Melville, nominally retired, was persuaded to play in an early-season first class match for Transvaal against Natal after which, in the last of a long line of injuries, he fractured a wrist; he recovered in time to play for Transvaal in the game against the touring side just before the first Test and scored 92 with what Wisden said was, "next to Hutton" – who scored 174 – "the best batting of the match".