Twitter bets big on ICC T20 World Cup with special page, exclusive access

The London 2012 Olympics and NASCAR garnered all the attention this year via Twitter, thanks to their special event pages. Now The World T20, that begins September 18 in Sri Lanka seems to be seems to be betting big on social media with its own dedicated Twitter page. This is a first-of-its-kind for a major global cricket event.

The #wt20 page accessible via https://twitter.com/#wt20 has already been launched is expected to gather the latest and greatest on Twitter about the tournament. Tweets from players, organisers, media and fans have already started to pour in.

Speaking of the Indian cricket team, many members of the Indian T20 squad are already on Twitter, including MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag , Virat Kohli, Harbhajan Singh, Rohit Sharma and Zaheer Khan.

The latest tweet from Yuvraj, who returned to the cricket field after 11 months following his recovery from ill-health, was: "The singhs are off to sri lanka !! Look forward to the big tournament!"

Moving away from tradition, @cricketicc will have first access to views of the players. Also the first question at any of the press conferences held, will be taken from a Twitter user. Whats more, video screens inside stadiums at WT20 in Sri Lanka will display tweets and retweets from both players and fans alike.

Score updates will also be available for all matches from @wt20scores, which will provide regular updates from all matches.

During ICC's 2011 World Cup, West Indies star Chris Gayle was one of first cricketers to express his views using twitter after their team bus was attacked by fans annoyed by the hosts' big defeat to the visitors at Mirpur in Bangladesh.

The ICC also has an official Facebook page that already has about 1.3 million fans, while @cricketicc is followed by over 425,000 supporters across the globe.

The ICC has also been closely working with Facebook on other special events, including the LG ICC Awards, where fans voted for the LG People's Choice Awards via a Facebook app. New Facebook integrations on the ICC Cricket 360 weekly magazine programme will be rolled out in the coming months.

Further, there is also a 'flock to unlock' partnership between Emirates airlines and the ICC using the #wt20, where fans will be rewarded for passing various milestones using the #wt20 and unlocking fantastic prizes. These include business class flights and Skywards miles, which they can win through entering competitions that will run simultaneously on the Emirates Airline and ICC Facebook pages.