"I did try to do my due diligence" - Henry Olonga on his dramatic U-turn regarding Heath Streak's death rumors

Former Zimbabwe pacer Henry Olonga came out in the open and cleared up his premature and misinformed announcement about his teammate Heath Streak's death on Tuesday, August 22.

The 47-year-old posted a heartfelt tribute on the passing away of the great all-rounder, only to make a dramatic U-turn hours later. Olonga later shared a screenshot of a Whatsapp chat with Streak and claimed that the former great was alive and that the news was fake.

The former pacer also stated that three distinct sources had revealed Streak's death, making him believe the news.

Speaking to ABC Radio Adelaide, Olonga affirmed that he did check several times before tweeting his condolences.

"I thought that's terrible, and all of the feelings we felt last year when Symonds, Marsh and Warnie died, they all flooded back. I thought, It's obviously official now, getting confirmation from three sources, so I then put up my own tribute, a few photos […] and reminisced over some of our great moments on the team. I did try to do my due diligence – I'm not a journalist, but I did do some fact-checking," said Olonga.

The duo were teammates during Zimbabwe's golden run to the Super Six stages in the 1999 and 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup.

While Henry Olonga finished with over 100 international wickets, Streak is Zimbabwe's all-time leading wicket-taker in Tests and ODIs, with a combined tally of 455 scalps.

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"For the family, it must have been terrible" - Henry Olonga

Henry Olonga sympathized with Heath Streak's family during the death rumor saga and called the incident unfortunate.

"For the family, it must have been terrible for them to wake up and get millions of messages pinging their phones asking if Heath's dead or alive or is it true or whatever, so I have total sympathy for them. We were obviously terribly at fault there — it was not true," said Olonga.

Despite confirming Streak still being extremely unwell, Olonga felt that the incident served as a warning to be well-informed before putting it out there on social media.

"I find myself in the middle of it not because I started it — I wasn't the first person to get it out there — but my messages somehow got some traction on social media. I suppose it serves as a cursory warning to people to be absolutely sure about facts. He's actually quite unwell at the moment, he's battling stage four cancer," concluded Henry Olonga.

Streak is the only Zimbabwean cricketer to have achieved the double of 1,000 career runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket in addition to 2,000 runs and 200 wickets in ODIs.

The 49-year-old had seven five-wicket hauls in his red ball career, with his best bowling figures being 6/73 against India in 2005.