If England win the final match of the Women's Ashes on Tuesday, they will secure the T20I series. That's nothing to sniff at, with a world tournament in the format scheduled for a year from now. The added bonus: it would extend their rivals' losing streak in T20 bilateral series, already stretching back to mid-2015.

It would also mean they draw level on points in the multi-format series, highlighting a slight shortcoming in how the spoils are currently allocated. A split result is still possible, but that's a debate for later. In the immediate term, it will make the drinks taste better on a long flight home at the end of an exhausting year.

England captain Heather Knight is still hurting from losing the opening T20 on Friday night, when her side gave up any chance of going home with the trophy. But they know they have a job to finish in Canberra. "We're gutted the Ashes have gone," she told the BBC. "But eight-eight is all we're focussed on now and in the context of the series it would be a fair result."

The visiting skipper also wants to emphasise her pride in the year that was capped by a World Cup win barely a year into her tenure. "Once the emotions have died away, you look back on it a bit more objectively," she said. "We'll be proud of what we've done in 2017. Winning the Ashes out here would've been that icing on the cake - it would've been a remarkable year. I think the girls can all look back and be very proud and if we can win tomorrow and win the Twenty20 series it bodes well for what we've got to come."

For Australia's part, Ellyse Perry described the final rubber as "extremely important" after losing the second T20I by 40 runs, with a keen eye to what comes next. "Everyone was incredibly disappointed with the performance," she said. "We lost clumps of wickets. We played some pretty silly shots at times and made some poor decisions. We want to be aggressive and play positive cricket but you have to be smart about how you do that too. England did that a lot better with the amount of twos they found in the field and keeping the ball on the ground a lot. Once they were set, they went big."

The all-rounder noted that it is the last time the Australians will be together as a group until they travel to India in February for a tri-series that will again include England. "It's really important for our next step as a team and in our evolution heading towards the T20 World Cup," she said. "To nail some things now and tomorrow is the best opportunity we've got for that."

Throwing further into the future, Perry added that the Australians are also aware that they need to be at the peak of their powers in the shortest form of the game when they host the World T20 three years from now. "We want it to be the biggest competition that we've ever seen for women's cricket," she said. "There's a huge onus and emphasis on our team playing good cricket and being the best in the world at it. That's a hard thing to do in T20, to be consistent at it, but we have the ability in the group to do it, we just have to find the formula."