page_title: Alan Melville
section_title: Postwar cricket and captaincy in England
hierarchical_section_title: Alan Melville / Postwar cricket and captaincy in England
caption_attribution_description: 12th September 1947: Alan Melville (1910 - 1983) cricket captain of South Africa
context_page_description: Alan Melville was a South African cricketer who played in 11 Tests from 1938 to 1949. He was born in Carnarvon, Northern Cape, South Africa and died at Sabie, Transvaal.
context_section_description: Discharged from the forces in 1945, Melville undertook an intensive programme of rehabilitation and was able to resume his cricket career early in 1946. 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. He returned to cricket at the start of the 1946–47 season and in the first match scored a new personal highest score with an innings of 153, putting on 299 for the seventh wicket with Bruce Mitchell which was a partnership record for that wicket in South African cricket. With his wife recovered and his own fitness not in doubt, he was picked as captain for the 1947 South African tour of England.
  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. He made centuries in the second match of the tour against Leicestershire and in the fourth match against Surrey. His form took a bit of a dip when he moved up to open the innings because Dennis Dyer, the expected opening partner for Bruce Mitchell, was badly out of form (and subsequently proved to have been ill for most of the season). The change proved successful in the first Test match, however: Melville scored a career-best 189 in the first innings and then, when the South Africans went in wanting 227 to win the match in 140 minutes, he hit an unbeaten 104 in the second innings, though the match remained drawn. Melville's performance set several records: this was the first time a South African batsman had scored two separate hundreds in a Test match; his first innings of 189 was at the time the highest by a South African against England, though Mitchell equalled it and was not out later in the same series; Melville's third-wicket partnership of 319 with vice-captain Dudley Nourse was a record in all Test cricket for that wicket, though beaten by Compton and Edrich for England later in the series, and South Africa's highest for any wicket; the South African total of 533 was the highest against England; and Melville's two centuries meant he had scored three Test centuries in succession, as his final innings in 1938–39 had been 103.
  Melville was not finished with record-setting, however. In the next Test at Lord's, with the South Africans facing a huge England total, he scored yet another century, 117, to equal the record of four consecutive Test centuries set by Jack Fingleton in the 1930s. The record of four hundreds in consecutive Test innings was beaten a year later by Everton Weekes of the West Indies who achieved five centuries in a row; Melville's (and Fingleton's) record of four has since been equalled only by Rahul Dravid. 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.
  The match at Lord's set the pattern for the rest of the tour as South Africa's limited bowling and inconsistent batting were exposed by England's weight of runs from Compton and Edrich and the home side's greater bowling variety and experience. Melville made 17 and 59 in the third Test, played at Manchester, which was also lost. The Leeds Test brought him scores of 0 and 30 in two weak South African batting performances, and a third Test defeat in succession. 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. In the five Tests, Melville had scored 569 runs at an average of 63.22; this put him third in the batting
caption: Melville in 1947
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