KARACHI: Dashing young opening batsman Ahmed Shehzad is likely to be named as Pakistan’s next Twenty20 captain, according to sources close the cricket board.

Following Pakistan’s failure to reach the knockout stage of the ICC World Twenty20 in Bangladesh earlier this month, which ultimately led to Mohammad Hafeez resigning as the national team skipper, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has already started deliberating as to who would be the next captain.

According to sources, PCB chairman Najam Sethi is heavily backing the credentials of Ahmed, who has never led Pakistan in any format at the international level but is set to become one of the youngest cricketers at the age of 22 to be handed the reins of captaincy of the national side.

Moin Khan, the chief selector-cum-Pakistan team manager, has reportedly given his consent in favour of Ahmed with the formal announcement from the cricket board expected to be made in a day or two.

Hafeez, who also captained Pakistan at the World Twenty20 in 2012 when Sri Lanka hosted the event, shouldered responsibility for his country’s first-ever preliminary-round exit while announcing his resignation after a meeting with the PCB chief in Lahore a day after his arrival from Dhaka.

Veteran all-rounder and former captain Shahid Afridi was mentioned in some quarters as Hafeez’s successor as the next Pakistan T20 skipper, but his hard-hitting utterances at team’s lacklustre performance in Bangladesh upon his arrival in Karachi landed the 34-year-old in trouble when the PCB issued him a show-cause notice for the same.

With Misbah-ul-Haq’s position as the Pakistan captain - both in Test and One-day International formats - quite safe at the moment, the PCB is now mulling naming Ahmed as the T20 skipper.

However, the elevation of Ahmed — who made his Test debut during Pakistan’s last series against Sri Lanka in the UAE in December/January after having made his international debut in April 2009 — could be a risky proposition since he is prone to losing his cool.

Ahmed, who sadly has held a history of disciplinary issues since his international debut at the youth level, was fined 50 per cent of his match fee after his altercation with veteran Sri Lankan opener Tillakaratne Dilshan during the third game of the ODI series in Abu Dhabi last December.