Basil Melle

Basil George von Brandis Melle (31 March 1891 — 8 January 1966) was a South African cricketer and paediatrician. He played as a right-handed batsman and bowled right-arm medium pace and later leg breaks. Melle began his first-class career as a batsman, and it was not until he gained a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford to study medicine that Melle would achieve noterity as a bowler during the 1913 season. Employing fast leg theory bowling, he took 15 wickets at an average of 15.90 during his freshman year. David Frith, the cricket historian, saw Melle as playing a role in the origins of bodyline bowling. A finger injury and outbreak of the First World War disrupted his bowling, and when first-class cricket resumed in 1919, Melle was rarely utilised as a bowler. He graduated from Oxford and returned to South Africa, where he became a prominent paediatrician.