As Rohit Sharma led Mumbai Indians (MI) to their record fifth Indian Premier League (IPL) title, cricket enthusiasts from across the globe hailed Hitman for his tremendous leadership skills.
While there has been a massive outpouring of praise for Rohit, several over-enthusiastic social media users went ahead to claim that Dubai's Burj Khalifa paid a tribute to the MI captain by displaying his picture post the historic victory.
The claim
On November 11, a day after the IPL final, a bunch of Rohit fans took to Twitter to post a picture of him being featured on the iconic skyscraper and wrote that he became the "first cricketer and third Indian after Mahatma Gandhi and Shah Rukh Khan" to receive the honour.
Furthermore, a Telugu YouTube channel named NTV Sports ran a report titled "Burj Khalifa lights up for Rohit Sharma and Mumbai Indians" and the video garnered over 70,000 views within a few hours.
The claim spread like wildfire on the Internet with scores of people believing it to be true, mostly because IPL 2020 was held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the final between MI and Shreyas Iyer's Delhi Capitals (DC) was played in Dubai.
Fact-check
International Business Times, India, carried out a fact-check and concluded that the image in question is fake. Our assessment was based on the following two points.
Firstly, as highlighted by the fact-checking website Alt News, the viral image bears an uncanny resemblance to the one tweeted by UAE-based news portal Emirates 24/7 in 2016 when the Burj Khalifa was lit up in blue.
Have a look at both the pictures here:
Secondly, on taking a closer look at Rohit's jersey in the dubious picture, it can be seen that the t-shirt features DHFL as one of the sponsors. But, the MI jersey for IPL 2020 had Marriott Bonvoy written instead.
Check it out here:
So, if Burj Khalifa had actually displayed Rohit's picture, it wouldn't have made such a rookie mistake as the MI jersey in the purported image is from last year's IPL.
Besides, there is no mention of the tribute on any social media handle of neither Burj Khalifa nor MI. Even Rohit's profiles do not have a single post regarding the honour.
Therefore, it is safe to say that an old image of Burj Khalifa was morphed to falsely claim that a picture of the MI skipper was displayed on the skyscraper to mark his fifth IPL title win.
