He was there when the game learned to attack with intelligence, when a young nation tested itself on Asian and Olympic stages, and when development meant standing on dusty turf teaching children how to hold a stick properly.

Param was many things in one life: Olympian, centre forward, national coach, star-maker, Klang’s quiet custodian of the game.

He scored when it mattered, coached with clarity when Malaysia needed direction, and spent decades giving hockey back to the community that shaped him.

His name remains attached to a youth tournament in Klang, not as a frozen tribute, but as a living classroom.

Param died in Klang on Friday, aged 91, leaving behind a sport that still carries his fingerprints.

Era I: The schoolboy who learned from giants (1954–1957)

Param’s journey began in Sitiawan and accelerated quickly in Perak.

At 19, still a schoolboy, he wore Perak colours in 1954 before landing in Johor, where fate delivered the most important apprenticeship of his life.

There, he met Wilfred “Freddie” Vias, a six‑footer built like a vault, a defender of rare intelligence, and the man Param would later call his greatest influence.

Vias did more than teach skills. He taught craft: how to find space, sell a feint, time a run so the defender never quite recovered.

For a young forward who was also a cricketer — Param once scored a century for Anglo‑Chinese School, Teluk Anson — the wristy mechanics came naturally.

Every weekend, Param followed Vias into the Singapore League, absorbing lessons that would define his attacking game.

Years later, he would say that single year in Johor changed everything. The friendship lasted a lifetime.

Era II: “Param and his magic wand” (late 1950s–1966)

By the late 1950s, Param was irreplaceable. Selangor had its striker; Malaya had found its attacking reference point.

In a 4–0 win over Singapore in Kuala Lumpur, Param scored a hattrick and left defenders spinning. Winger R Yogeswaran, supplying from the left, remembers the Straits Times headline the next morning: Param and his magic wand.

That wand flickered across Asia.

Param starred at the Asian Games in Tokyo (1958), Jakarta (1962) and Bangkok (1966), and at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, where he scored eight goals in nine matches. He dedicated that feat to Vias.

Jakarta mattered beyond medals. Malaya won bronze — its first men’s hockey medal at a major tournament — beating Japan 2–0.

The squad was rich in character: scholars and soldiers, future generals and administrators who would later shape Malaysian sport.

Politics shadowed the Games. Cold War tensions over the exclusion of Israel and Taiwan turned Jakarta into a diplomatic fault line.

India’s Guru Dutt Sondhi, a senior International Olympic Committee member and Asian Games Federation vice-president, challenged the host nation’s stance and drew the ire of President Sukarno. Protests followed.

The Malayan hockey team, with 10 Indian players, was instructed to wear songkok in public to avoid being mistaken for Indians.

Through it all, the hockey stayed clean.

At centre forward, Param anchored a team, and a young nation, learning how to compete and belong.

Many of his team-mates later became coaches and administrators. The shift from player to mentor came naturally to Param, who taught by example: quiet, exacting, persuasive.

Era III: Olympics again — this time as coach (1984–1989)

Param returned to the Olympics in 1984, not with a stick but with responsibility. As chief coach, he led Malaysia to Los Angeles, carrying forward discipline, clarity and faith in preparation.

Five years later came a singular honour. Param became the only Malaysian to coach the Asian All-Stars hockey team, guiding them on tour across Asia and Europe in 1989 — continental recognition of a man whose understanding of the game travelled well beyond borders.

Asian Hockey Federation president Fumio Ogura yesterday described Param as “a well-recognised and influential figure in the community”, whose services were “acknowledged and appreciated across the Asian hockey community”.

Era IV: The door-opener (1990s)

For Dr Ramlan Aziz, who first joined Param’s staff as team doctor in 1991 before later serving as director-general of the National Sports Council, Param was not just a coach but a door-opener.

“My dear friend was the man who gave me my first opportunity as a team doctor,” said Dr Ramlan. “Kind, thoughtful and generous in words and deeds… one of the greatest men I have had the privilege of knowing.”

That journey culminated at the 1993 Junior World Cup in Barcelona, where Param guided Malaysia’s juniors, shaping not only players but the professionals around them.

He believed development was never accidental. Clubs had to build juniors properly. Parents had to stay involved. Coaches had to teach patience. He lived those beliefs.

Era V: Klang’s hockey guru (1968–2025)

When Param stopped playing competitively in 1968, he did not step away. He stepped closer.

At the hockey stadium in Pandamaran, Klang, he trained anyone willing to listen. He built a district programme with the same seriousness he once brought to Olympic competition.

In Klang, he was hero-worshipped. The annual C Paramalingam Trophy — a youth tournament drawing district, club and school sides — remains his most enduring gift.

Generations learned the game from him, and learned how to behave within it.

Honours followed: Best national coach (1999), a national sports award from the Yang di‑Pertuan Agong (2007), and induction into the Olympic Council of Malaysia Hall of Fame (2014). Sadly, not a datukship.

But Param valued something else more.

Friends often said being around him made you love the process: the sweat, the repetition, the daily disciplines that turn sport into character.

Yogeswaran, who once fed him goals and later stood beside him as a peer, said Param held a defining place in Malaysia’s hockey evolution, first as a scorer, later as a shaper of lives.

Even in later years, a wheelchair did not dim his presence. Royalty stopped to speak; old teammates lingered; young players queued for a story or a correction.

Param insisted on discipline and kindness in equal measure. He taught that the measure of a player was not a headline, but the habit of turning up and getting better.

He is survived by his wife and daughter, and a hockey community that will keep his name in circulation — on tournament lists, in coaching conversations and at reunion tables.

The funeral service will be held today from 10am to 1pm at 41, Jalan Keriang, Telok Gadong, Klang, followed by cremation at the Hindu Crematorium Simpang Lima, Jalan Bukit Kubur.