Leela Row Dayal

Leela Row Dayal (19 December 1911 – unknown) was a female tennis player and author from India. She was the first female Indian tennis player to win a match at the Wimbledon Championships. She wrote several books on Indian classical dance in both English and Sanskrit.

Leela Row Dayal
Full nameLeela Reghavendra Row
Country (sports) British India
Born(1911-12-19)19 December 1911
Bombay, India
Height4 ft 10 in (1.47 m) [1]
PlaysRight-handed
Singles
Grand Slam Singles results
French Open2R (1935)
Wimbledon2R (1934)
Doubles
Grand Slam Doubles results
French Open1R (1931, 1932)
Grand Slam Mixed Doubles results
French Open1R (1932)

Career

Tennis

At the 1934 Wimbledon Championships she became the first Indian female player to win a match, defeating Gladys Southwell in the first round of the singles event. In the second round she was defeated by Ida Adamoff in three sets.[2][3][4] The next year, 1935, she returned but lost in the first round in straight sets to Evelyn Dearman.[2]

She entered the singles competition of the French Championships five times (1931–32, 1934–36) but did not manage to win a match. Her second round result in 1935 was due to a bye in the first round.

Row won seven singles titles at the All India Championships (1931, 1936–38, 1940–41, 1943) and was runner-up on three occasions (1932–33, 1942). In 1931 she won the singles title at the West of India Championships and she was a finalist there in 1933.[5]

The straight backhand drive was her favorite shot.[5]

Author

Row was the author of several books on ancient and modern classical Indian dance.[6][7] These books were bilingual, written in English and Sanskrit.[6] In 1958 she published "Natya Chandrika", a handwritten bilingual treatise on the Indian classical dance form Natya.[6][8] She also helped to translate many poems made by her mother and converted them into Sankskrit plays.[9]

Personal life

Row was the daughter of Raghavendra Row and Pandita Kshama Row, a Sanskrit poet.[9] She was educated in India, England and France.[5] In 1943 she married Harishwar Dayal, an Indian civil servant who later became the Indian Ambassador to the United States and Nepal.[6] He died in May 1964 while on a trip to the Khumbu area of Mount Everest.[10][9]

References
  1. "Tennis results in England". Daily News. 12 June 1934. p. 7 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. "Players archive – Leela Row". Wimbledon. AELTC.
  3. Soutik Biswas. "Indian women make history in Rio". BBC News. In 1934, Leela Row, another Anglo-Indian, became the first Indian woman to win a match in Wimbledon.
  4. Sen, Ronojoy (2015). Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 198. ISBN 978-0231164900. The honor of being the first Indian woman to win a match at Wimbledon went to Leela Row, another Anglo-Indian, who won in the first round in 1934.
  5. Lowe, Gordon (1935). Lowe's Lawn Tennis Annual. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. p. 232.
  6. "Indian dance forms explained". The Los Angeles Times. 27 October 1958. p. 35 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. Ray Dhaliwal (21 February 1976). "Dancing builds stamina for mountain climbing". New Nation. p. 4 – via NewspapersSG.
  8. "'Natya Chandrika': a study by Leela Row Dayal in English and Sanskrit, with..." The National Archives.
  9. Sidin Vadukut (30 June 2018). "The remarkable life of Leela Row Dayal". LiveMint.
  10. "Harishwar Dayal is dead". The New York Times. 21 May 1964.
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