Why would you expect the count to be more than one, when there's only one instance of what you're matching?

UPDATE: OP has been edited without notice since this reply and the others to date. Original code (with code tags added by /me) was:

$cnt =0
$str="hi hi harshmane hi hi";
 if ($str=~/([harsh]+)/g)        # cf current content
{
   $cnt++;
}
print $cnt;
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OP has been msgd that such changes without notice are unhelpful.