Cape Town: Indian captain Saurav Ganguly gave World Cup teammates a scare on Saturday when he woke up with a viral infection and sore throat five days before their first match.

But Ganguly braved the fever to attend the traditional meeting of managers and captains of all 14 teams called by the International Cricket Council to discuss tournament rules.

"Saurav looked quite bad when he got up this morning, but insisted he will attend the meeting," team official Amrit Mathur said.

"In fact, manager Jyoti Bajpai had prepared vice-captain Rahul Dravid to go for the meeting, but the captain wanted to go himself."

Ganguly was also confident he would be fit to play India's first match against the Netherlands at Boland Park, Paarl on Wednesday, Mathur said.

The World Cup officially gets underway later on Saturday with a two-hour opening ceremony at Newlands, the venue of Sunday's first match between hosts South Africa and the West Indies.

Copyright AFP 2001

Extras:
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Warm-up match loss a real wake-up call says Ganguly