Read the book, it is very interesting and explains in detail the genesis of Russian-British tensions.

I will admit, I am only able to read the first page of the article you supply. However, in that excerpt, I understand the author to be arguing against the existence of a Machiavellian, very organized very-competent intelligence service out of British India, with the express purpose of frustrating Russian expansion.

So, to argue that the British werent that organized, or weren't always able to frustrate Russian ambitions, or not all British officers were Russophobes; that argument does not necessarily negate the basic existence of the Great Game.

The larger truth that Hopkirk explains is that there were factions of both Russophobes and Russophiles in Britain. At times, Britain considered Russia the great threat, and at other times fears of Russian expansion in Central Asia diminished. There certainly were instances where British and Russian explorers traveled into the Khanate of Bukhara or the Khanate of Khiva, but it was a rarity for these agents to meet their opposites.

So, the events that Rudyard Kipling presents in Kim were fictionalized, but there definitely were British fears of Russian expansion in Central Asia in the late-19th century.

Peter Hopkirk has probably written more about this than any other generally available scholar. His books are accessible and interesting, and he's researched the heck out of the Great Game. I would highly recommend them.

• Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia, 1980

• Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet, 1982

• The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia, 1990

• The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, 1992

• On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Great Game and the Great War, 1994

• Quest for Kim: in Search of Kipling's Great Game, 1996

Edit: Formatting.