England slumped to a ten-wicket defeat for only the fourth time in their history today as New Zealand took a stranglehold on their one-day series at Seddon Park.

Hoping to make amends for Saturday's desperate six-wicket defeat at Wellington, which was completed with 20 overs to spare, England instead slumped to even greater depths in the second game of the five-match series.

Put into bat, England were on course for a competitive total at 85 for two after 15 overs when rain halted play for a further two hours and 20 minutes and restricted the match to 36 overs a side. But their momentum was lost and England slumped to 158 all out by losing eight wickets for 73 runs after the restart and New Zealand completed their victory in only 18.1 overs, chasing a target of 165 set by the Duckworth-Lewis method of calculation.

It was only the fourth time in 485 one-day internationals that England had suffered such a defeat and followed a record one-day partnership by New Zealand against England from Jessie Ryder and Brendon McCullum off only 109 balls.

Ryder, playing only his second one-day international, won the man-of-the-match award after hitting an unbeaten 79 off 62 balls including 11 fours and two sixes while McCullum was unbeaten on 80 from 47 balls including eight fours and five sixes.

"It was great," Ryder said. "We just enjoyed ourselves, played our shots and they came off today. They came at us quite hard early doors but we overcame it.

"To finish it off with ten wickets in hand was unbelievable - the first of my career, hopefully the first of many."

It was a desperately inept display, which included three run-outs in England's innings for the second successive match while hard-hitting openers McCullum and Ryder were both dropped inside the first five overs of New Zealand's reply.

Those two misses - McCullum was dropped before he had scored by wicketkeeper Phil Mustard off Jimmy Anderson and Ryder missed on nine by Owais Shah at slip off Ryan Sidebottom - were particularly costly with New Zealand's openers hammering England's wayward attack.

They raced to a fifty partnership in only 39 balls and brought up their century stand in 66 balls with both batsmen racing to quickfire half centuries, Ryder reaching the landmark off 39 balls and McCullum bringing it up off only 27 balls.

Paul Collingwood, the England captain, was at a loss to explain their collapse following the rain break. "It was very poor, very disappointing," Collingwood said. "All the blokes in the dressing room are devastated at that performance.

"We had a good start and when that rain came it really took the stuffing out of us in some ways. I don't know why, I wish I could pinpoint it but from that moment on really it was a very poor performance. When we came out after the break we didn't get ourselves in, we had another few run-outs, which was again disappointing because we didn't learn from the last game.