Following the end of the 1932 University cricket season, Melville made his debut for Sussex, playing in 11 matches and scoring consistent runs, if with no high scores. 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. He played for Sussex again in the second half of the 1933 season and, as in the previous year, was not conspicuously successful – until, virtually at the end of the season, the West Indian touring team played Sussex. 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. Bowley was quickly hurt and retired; Melville came in and began hitting the bowling; Langridge was then also forced to retire hurt (he later returned to make 172), but Melville went on to 114 and a four-man first-wicket stand of 223.