Colly blasts dire England after Black Caps' 10-wicket hammering

So what happened next? England played like absolute jokers in Wellington and then worse, much worse, here to be humiliated by 10 wickets for the first time by New Zealand and only the fourth time in their 485 one-day internationals.

You truly could not make it up. How could England confound us so? How could they make us all look like chumps for backing them and then play with a naivety and a lack of cricketing nous that was truly astonishing in this rain-affected match? It leaves them two down with three to play in this one-day series and in serious danger of tossing away a golden opportunity to beat a side ranked third best in one-day cricket in the world on their own patch.

It is difficult to believe that they have ever been more emphatically beaten in a one-day international than here at the hands of a barely known seamer called Michael Mason and a roughly-hewn maverick by the name of Jesse Ryder, who has been plucked from the bad boy scrapheap suddenly to look like a world-beater.

England's bowlers were a brainless combination, sending down long hop after pathetic long hop at Ryder and Brendon McCullum as England made an embarrassing fist of defending a below par 158 all out in their revised allocation of 36 overs. It meant that the Black Caps positively creamed their way to their Duckworth-Lewis target of 165 with 107 balls in hand.

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To be fair, both the admirable Ryan Sidebottom and the increasingly exasperating Jimmy Anderson could and should have taken a wicket each in the first four overs of New Zealand's reply but saw perfectly catchable chances go down, McCullum being reprieved by Phil Mustard without scoring and Ryder being dropped at slip by Owais Shah on eight.

To tell the tale of an extraordinary match, England made a perfectly decent start after being put in and, needing a good score on this belter of a wicket, they seemed well set after cruising to 85 for two off 15 overs when the rain came.

Two hours 20 minutes later, when play resumed with the match reduced to 36 overs, it suddenly became a different story with Mason being reincarnated as Richard Hadlee in his prime and England nervously pushing and prodding to another below par score.

Their fortunes were encapsulated not only by another three run outs - far too dumb for words - but by the display of poor Ravi Bopara, whose confidence has been eroded both by his terrible time in the Test series in Sri Lanka and now by his travails in the opening matches here. It was almost painful to watch this highly talented young player nervously poke his way to 23 off 42 balls, running out top scorer Alastair Cook in the process with one of the worst calls in cricket history, before lobbing a full toss straight down deep mid-wicket's throat. Do England now put Bopara out of his misery and leave him out of the side, or back him and tell him to go and put it right in Auckland on Friday? It is a brutally difficult call.

Sidebottom made an aggressive start to the Kiwi replay before being let down by Shah and then it was all way one traffic, McCullum hitting no fewer than five sixes in his 80 with 'big' Jesse smashing two sixes and 11 fours to reach 79.

What on earth has gone wrong in the last two games, skipper? "We haven't played to the standards we set ourselves," said Paul Collingwood. "Words have already been spoken in the dressing room and we don't want those sort of performances again. We've let ourselves and our supporters down."

England have let us all down in the last four days. They are the more talented team in this contest. Now they have to show it.