Bhavi Devchand is an elite female cricketer that has represented a range of professional teams including Western Australia, the Perth Scorchers, Victoria, the Melbourne Stars and Gloucestershire. She also works as a performance coach, taking the lessons learnt from navigating the cut-throat world of elite sport, to help people overcome obstacles and achieve their goals by being the best version of themselves.
Bhavi Devchand is a batting all-rounder who has come through the WA State system at under-17 and under-18 levels.
The Subiaco-Floreat talent, who originally hailed from Whitfords, made her Fury debut during the 2011-12 season, shortly after taking six wickets in a game at first grade level against South Perth.
Bhavi, who has a Zimbabwean background, impressed at the 2010-11 under-18 National Championships for WA, where she was the team's top scorer and also took six wickets.
Born in Zimbabwe into a family of Indian origin, Bhavi encountered a range of cultural barriers just to be able to play sport. She spent the early part of her cricket career with Western Australia and the Perth Scorchers on the fringe, always told she had talent but unable to consistently produce results. This led to a constant search, always looking for the next edge, chasing the perfection that she thought was required to be successful. She fell deep into the current world of high performance where our self-worth is based on the results we produce.
As she tried harder, things seemed to get worse and she eventually lost her dream job. Although she suffered immensely with the loss of identity and uncertainty that followed, it opened up an opportunity for a whole new perspective. Bhavi took a year off and travelled to Ireland and India before relocating to Melbourne, where this newfound perspective started to produce some incredible results:
“I started to rediscover that feeling I had when I was a little girl. Grateful to play, curious about getting better & excited for the challenge. What if everything I had so desperately been searching for was already inside of me?
I also started coaching more, and through this also realised I wasn't the only one with this need to do more to be more. In fact, the most common issues in performance didn't have much to do with having the perfect technique, they originated in fear. Fear of others opinions, of the unknown, of not being enough.
Irrespective of who you are or what you've achieved, we're all searching for the same things - connection, unconditional love & purpose. The problem seems to arise when we search outside of us for these things. We rely on the world around us to tell us stories about what success should look like. Social media and advertising highlight perfectionism, making it very difficult to embrace who we are.
I absolutely love to connect with those that are in the arena, battling the highs and lows that come with pursuing potential. How do they manage rugged and high-pressure environments? How can we have a red hot crack at our goals without getting attached to outcomes? And most importantly, how do we create environments that help foster this approach?”
Through The Inside Edge Project, Bhavi hosts the Inside Edge Podcast and facilities a range of masterclasses to help individuals & cultures shift their perspective, lead with purpose and perform with freedom.
The Inside Edge Podcast aims to explore how the best in the world navigate all the noise to consistently perform in the most rugged and high-pressure environments. You can catch all of Bhavi's episodes from the Inside Edge Project podcast here - https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-inside-edge/id1529071905
