Feature by Mark Bassant (photo by Shirley Bahadur) in the Trinidad Guardian, April 1995. Brian Seebaran, at 19 the youngest-ever winner of the 1994 Donald King Scholarship Award — given to Canada's most outstanding under-25 cricketer — spent the 1995 season in Trinidad (he is a multi-national of Trinidad and Tobago and Canada) playing for Clarke Road United in Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board competitions. The article records that at 15 he scored 182 not out for Vancouver, the highest individual score by a player from British Columbia, and that he captained the Canadian junior team on its 1993 tour of Denmark. He hoped to make the Canadian national team for its September 1995 tour of the West Indies. The headline plays on Brian Lara: the photo caption notes the left-handed Seebaran "bats left-handed like his namesake Brian Lara," and Seebaran himself called Lara "almost perfect," with Sir Garry Sobers the other cricketer he admired most. The full article text appears in the photograph above.
Transcription (as printed):
Photo caption: ANOTHER BRIAN?: Canada’s Brian Seebaran, who bats left-handed like his namesake Brian Lara, demonstrates his version of the Lara drive. Photo by SHIRLEY BAHADUR.
BRIAN SEEBARAN was only 19 when he became the 1994 Donald King Scholarship Award winner. Since the award is given for the most outstanding Under-25 cricketer in Canada, it is no surprise that Seebaran is the youngest ever awardee.
It is not the only first that the young Canadian with Trinidad roots has recorded.
In the past, recipients of this award were either sent to England or Australia for a six to eight week program. But because Canada is trying to establish a better liaison with Trinidad, Seebaran, whose father is Trinidadian, has been sent to this country to participate in a program here for the first time. He will play for Clarke Road United in Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board of Control competitions until August.
Brian started playing cricket at the age of four with a great deal of help from his father, Ben, who migrated from Trinidad to Canada in 1960. He has now handed over the responsibilities of the serious coaching to more professional hands but he continues to support Brain [as printed] with advice and a critical eye.
A student of the Simon Fraser University, Brian is currently pursuing a degree in linguistics. According to him, being “Trinidadian,” has helped him to enrich his cultural and linguistic background and this has helped him no end in his work at university.
At 15, Brian scored 182 not out for Vancouver, the highest individual score by a player from that province. Two years later in 1992, at the age of 17, he captained the Canadian Junior Team on a tour to Denmark. However, he stresses that there is a whole lot still to be done in his career.
“I see myself just going out there and trying to do my best and to concentrate and do what is required of me.”
“Like Brian Lara!” he adds with a chuckle. Lara is, naturally, one of the cricketers he admires and respects most and he describes him as “almost perfect.”
Of Sir Gary Sobers whom he also admires a great deal, he says that “he’s always been a class above the rest.”
At the end of this season when he returns home, he expects to try out for the Canadian National Team. That team will be touring the West Indies in September of this year and Seebaran hopes he will be among the party which will be hopping from island to island in the footsteps of Brian Lara.
Source: Trinidad Guardian, April 1995 (Wednesday edition; the clipping is dated by hand "April 1995").