Heath Hilton Streak was born on the 16th of March 1974 in Rhodesia’s Bulawayo. He is the son of Denis Streak. After retirement he has taken on the role of spreading his knowledge of the game and become a coach. Statistically, he is the best bowler to have played for Zimbabwe. He is the only one to have taken over 100 Test wickets and one of only four Zimbabwean bowlers to have taken 100 ODI wickets. Streak was the head coach of the Zimbabwean team until early 2018 and the bowling coach for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League in 2018.
Streak played in the same Matabeleland team as his father in the final of the Lonrho Logan Cup against the Mashonaland Country Districts in the 1995/96 season. This was the first time a father and son had played in the same first-class match for more than thirty years. Streak made his mark on the international scene by taking 8 wickets in the 2nd Test at Rawalpindi against Pakistan in 1993. He won the Player of the series award and took 22 wickets at an average of 13.54. In the 2000/01 season Streak won 2 Man of the Series awards, first on Zimbabwe’s tour of England then on Bangladesh’s tour of Zimbabwe.
He retired in the year 2005 from international cricket to become the captain of Warwickshire Country Cricket Club. Claiming that captaining was affecting his on-field abilities, he resigned in 2007 and he was replaced by Darren Maddy. At the end of 2007 he joined the Ahmedabad Rockets in the Indian Cricket League where he played two seasons in the ICL along with appearing in the Hong Kong sixes.
In 2009 he was given the responsibility of working with young Zimbabwean fast bowlers and for franchise cricket and in the same year he was appointed bowling coach of the Zimbabwean national cricket team. He was in this position until 2013 when his contract was not renewed. From May 2014 until 2016 he was the bowling coach of the Bangladesh national team. He then took up the position of Zimbabwean national team coach in late 2016. He later resigned after the team failed to qualify for the World Cup 2019.
He was once accused of being a racist by Zimbabwe Cricket authorities which he refuted by saying, “Zimbabwean Cricket have far too often tried to use the race card as a way to deviate from the actual issues of poor governance”.
