The legendary Zimbabwe cricketer and former skipper Heath Streak had been battling cancer for a long time. After the former Zimbabwean cricketer Henry Olonga shared the news of his death, the rumour only grew out of proportion. There have been over 100K+ searches about the cricketer Health Streak on August 23, 2023 alone.
Heath Streak, the former Zimbabwe captain is still country’s all-time highest wicket-taker in both Tests and ODIs. He is also only Zimbabwe cricketer to complete the double of 100 Test wickets and 1000 Test runs and the only one from the country to score 2000 runs and claim 200 wickets in ODIs. He was banned from all crickets for eight years after he accepted charges of breaching ICC Anti-Corruption Code.
So after the rumour began, we explored the term, ‘Heath Streak’ through ‘Google Trends’. One can select the region, the duration, category and even web search on Google Trends. That’s how we analysed how the interest in the rumour about Heath Streak grew over time.
The rumours started after Henry Olonga the former Zimbabwean cricketer himself, posted the news about Health Streak’s death stating, “Sad news coming through that Health Streak has crossed to the other side RIP @ZimCricketv legend. The greatest all rounder we produced. It was a pleasure playing with you. See you on the other side when my bowling spell comes to an end”
The tweet soon received over 140.2K insights. Though Olonga had access to Health Streak and his family, instead of verifying the information first the misinformation made its way on Twitter. Soon other cricketers and media organizations tapped on the news and carried it ahead. This tweet already had over 709 tweets and then the news took up and the misinformation was spread widely.
International news agencies also fell victim to the fake news and shared the story without verification. Later the story was retracted and a statement was issued by these news agencies.
Soon other cricketers too took to X and tributes began to pour in for Heath Streak. Virendra Shewag, Ashwin Ravi, Anil Kumble, Dav Whatmore, Wasim Jaffer, Dodda Ganesh, Munaf Patel and several others shared condolence message.
But what happened later was Heath Streak texting Henry Olonga that he is alive, but in those two hours, the rumour picked up and was trending everywhere.
It was Henry Olonga, who again took to Twitter and informed about the wellbeing of Heath Streak.
Henry Olonga then issued a clarification and then it was clear that it was a misinformation that had spread like a wildfire. By afternoon Heath Streak was trending everywhere, even in the news section along with Chandrayaan 3.
Soon after, South African cricketer Herschelle Gibbs shared a screenshot of the Facebook post of Heath Streak’s daughter, Holly Streak Cook.
Holly’s Facebook and Instagram profile is private and hence, only the screenshot made it to social media. In a Zimbabwean newspaper, Chronicle, Karen Streak, Heath’s mother too confirmed that it is fake news that her son is dead.
This was a rare scenario where both the misinformation and the clarification were widely shared and rather the source of both was the same person. It was one such occasion where even the news agencies were not to be trusted.
