Thanks to Dhoni's blistering innings, the defending champions romped into the second qualifiers with a comfortable 38-run victory over Mumbai Indians last night.
"Dhoni's knock was the turning point of the match and if we had got him out earlier, the match could have gone in Mumbai Indians' favour," Harbhajan said after his team crashed out of the IPL 5.
"The crucial 50-odd runs from Dhoni's bat took the game away from us," he added.
Harbhajan also said that losing four wickets between 7-12 overs also turned out to be costly for his team.
"We lost Sachin Tendulkar and Dwayne Smith in two overs. In next few overs we also lost Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik. They are core of our batting lineup and losing them in quick succession had put the team under pressure," he said.
Insisting that things could have been different if Rohit had batted till the 18th over, Harbhajan said, "We didn't want to be five down in 13 overs when we are chasing 180," he said.
Chasing the stiff target of 188, Mumbai could muster only 149 for nine in their stipulated 20 overs with opener Dwayne Smith (38) being the top-scorer.
Mumbai skipper also said that the Super Kings were a better side as far as both batting and bowling were concerned.
"In first two overs we picked up two early wickets and were in the game till the ninth over. We didn't bowl as well as we should have," said Harbhajan. (MORE)
