The reason Melville was captaining Sussex at the end of the 1933 season was that the regular captain Robert Scott, himself a stand-in for the permanently unwell K. S. Duleepsinhji, had stood down because of the death of his father; Scott was unable to resume in 1934, and Melville took over the Sussex captaincy for the next two seasons. Sussex had finished second in the County Championship for each of the preceding two seasons and under Melville in 1934 they again finished second, but there was veiled criticism of changes to the county's style of play in the 1935 edition of "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack". "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. "At times they would not risk anything." Wisden compared Melville's "strange disinclination to experiment" with the adventurous approach taken by Maurice Tate, the senior professional at the club, who captained the side when Melville missed a few games. As a batsman, Melville was highly successful, scoring 1504 runs at an average of 42.97 with three centuries, though in the heady world of Sussex batting at the time that still left him only fifth in the county's batting averages, behind Tommy Cook, John Langridge, Jim Parks, Sr. and Harry Parks.