England’s silver medals on Thursday at the World Team Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan, were the team’s first of any colour in major competition since 1997. European gold in that year seemed the last hurrah of a generation which had proved itself No 2 to the former Soviet Union.
Before that England won bronze at the 1989 world teams and the 1990 Olympiad but then the Berlin Wall came down and new strong chess nations appeared from Eastern Europe and Asia.
England proved themselves more consistent than their major rivals, China, India and the US, in Kazakhstan, although the margins were narrow. They were mentally tough, too, often fighting back strongly from dubious mid-session positions.
But as Barden goes on to point out, there is not a pack of hungry young players out there trying to force their way into the team. So this may be a last hurrah rather than a new dawn,
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