In a bid to bring together 460 million people playing cricket globally to celebrate the magnificent diversity of cricket, the ICC on Wednesday launched the criiio campaign on the eve of the men's World Cup.

The ICC asked the fans to join the social cricket tribe by sharing pictures and videos of where and how they play cricket across the world using the newly launched #criiio and visiting criiio.com.

This builds on the success of the recent user-generated social media initiative #WorldWideWickets and is the first of a series of programs that will be launched by the ICC over the next 12 months.

"On the eve of the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup which brings together the best ten teams and players in the world, we want to celebrate the nearly half a billion fans playing social cricket around the world," said ICC Chief Executive, Manu Sawhney.

"Criiio is a celebration of everyone playing cricket their way and world cricket wants to invite them into the criiio tribe. Cricket is for everyone, it is inexpensive, engaging, simple and fun, and we want to share all the different ways that the game is being played."

Around the world hundreds of millions of fans are playing cricket the way they like to on the beach, in a carpark or gully or their backyard.

Criiio is a celebration of all the brilliant and unique ways people play the game which can be played anywhere, by anyone and at any time.

The ICC World Cup begins Thursday with a clash between South Africa and England.